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(In progress) 

Brujería 

In my mother's family,

Brujería is a family heirloom

Women die young of diseases that eat us from the inside

After spending lifetimes healing others

Loving others

Welcoming others into this life 

And we live(d)

Casting spells over pots and pans

Creating recipes for curing broken hearts

And bodies

For breaking hearts

And bodies 

And we drive men mad. 

Is it the gait of our walk?

Like curtains swaying with spirits hiding behind them

Or the ringing of our laugh?

Like a bell calling forth all the demons that men have

But don't like to name 
Who come out to suffocate that laughter

We let broken men between our legs

But no spell is strong enough 

To patch shattered glass

I've come from a line of hurt women too long

And read too many books

To not believe in the power held in our

Ovarios

Our matrices 

I've eaten too many bowls of caldo and plates of mole 

And peeled too many chiles and kneaded too much maíz

Not to believe that our brujería

Is our legacy 

Our means of survival 

That the recipes we passed down

Hold secrets,

Like the codex of the Mexica people,

Only to be translated by those hearts

That know