Tropical Depression - Julissa Smith Poem by Sarah McCauley

Tropical Depression

It is the 10th time this year that my mental health has deferred me from cleaning my room,
Which is strange because it is only march.
Which means that it is not even hurricane season yet
All the same, my mother tells my family members that my room has been hit by hurricane Julissa,
And the elder men who swear that old plus man must equal wise,
Start to tell me stories about hurricanes that carry the names of women,
And how they always do the most damage
And they probably expect us to take that hit because our fathers were farmers that only raised scapegoats.
But my mother has replayed the history to me 1000 times over.
She always starts with
My great grandmother
Who could cook up a spell better than she could cook up a meal,
Who you went to when you wanted your husband dead,
The woman that the children in the neighborhood whispered stories about,
Because women like her were burned at the stake centuries ago.
Then my grandmother
who lived in a time where child marriages were as regular as Rain,
And never lived until the day her husband died,
Once, a man came to her door step trying to take her hand for marriage,
And she drew a line in the sand with her machete and dared him to cross it,
Or to cross her again.
They called her witch,
Called any woman who made it clear that she could do without a man, a witch,
Witch leads us back… to my mother
Who brought me up in a matriarchy so I would know who's blood I carried beneath my skin,
Every Good Friday cracking eggs to see the future and cracking eggs to make us breakfast.
She turned on the heat to her own stove,
And turned the lock to her own home,
She held me like a back brace so I would stand tall and look over all that she'd secured for me.
So
Maybe the women of my family are witches, brujas, obia women,
Using our powers to escape from the wicked.
Maybe the women of my family are magicians,
Always having a trick or a knife up their sleeves,
Ready to strike at any man who thinks he could twist my will by calling me baby.
Or twist my arm when I don't respond to him calling me baby.
Maybe the women of my family are hurricanes
And maybe hurricane's just the name that a man gave to mother nature's reclamation of herself.
All I know is that
There must be magic involved for our blood to have survived this long.
Maybe I carry that Trauma in my blood,
But even if the Trauma survives, at least something survives of us.
And if the women of my family can survive time and time again then maybe I will survive this tropical depression.
Knowing all of this,
Makes it hard for me to not walk into the room like I have a place there.
For me to claim the ruin that preceded me,
Like this land is mine,
Like this body is mine,
Like my history was something that was supposed to meet me here.

And maybe we are the hurricane that you weren't prepared for.
The natural disaster that saw all that man claimed to be his and took it back,
and generation after generation,
We will take ourselves back again.