Para Mis Hermanas
Last night I was accused of whispering. In a fit of full-fledged self-proclaimed righteousness, my accuser overlooked the irony of his de-contextualized accusations.
Amidst the litany of proclamations he continued to shout from the safety of the doorway unaware, unconcerned, and untethered by the socialized norms of which he has never been expected to adhere; not understanding that his particular choice to shout from the obvious space of entry and exit epitomizes an ongoing dynamic beyond us. Because he has always had full permission to own his rage, while never fully having to own the accountability for that choice often indiscriminately exercised and weaponized as a right, I’m sure the few words I chose to speak were misinterpreted as a general silence that ratified his self-sanctioned bravado.
Last night I was accused of whispering. Maligned as “big and bad,” I held my tongue in the moment, swallowed my words, feeling the waves of years of accumulated grief. In that moment, I held the stories of so many women vilified across space and time for daring to speak their truths while equally and violently scorned for their silence. Women, present and past, who have whispered across tables to weave together collective stories of survival and truth. Women, perfect and flawed, who have been dismissed as chismosas and mitoteras. Menacing women burdened with the unratified intergenerational indentured servitude bestowed upon them as the perpetual containers of deflected accountability. An inconvenient convenience that advances a lopsided permissive dysfunction that leaves us in a perpetual state of checkmate --and the irony of that phrasing is not lost on me.
When one can wear rage as a right, the significance of a whisper is lost. Disassociated dissonance. Dismissed, decontextualized, distorted, devalued.
They say it’s no use crying over spilt milk, but what of spilt wine?
Last night I was accused of whispering.
This morning, the women who have carried me in my veins, whispered back. In whispered silence de la tinta sagrada, I holler truths righting through writing, re-membering to write whole how we’ve survived traditions of silence that were never ours to hold, judged for daring to thrive, and in spite of all threats we remain alive.