Las Mujeres de mi Casa en el Espejo
Nuestras Mujeres
(I Am the Granddaughter of Mamá Niña)
I am the granddaughter of Mamá Niña.
The daughter of Aida.
The sister of Jellyka.
And the tía of Mijeyka, Ariadna, and Tiara.
We are women who do not tire easily.
We do not break.
We bend. We spiral. We bloom.
We are fern spirals—cíclicas, ancient, and sacred.
We open when the sun signals,
but only when we decide,
only when our hearts command it.
We resist—on the island,
and in the “acá afuera,”
this Diaspora that stretches and pulls and remakes us daily.
We do what must be done.
For joy.
For survival.
For the generations behind and ahead of us.
That day—I had been out all night.
It was a party, a good one.
One of those nights that reminds you you're alive.
I watched the sun rise.
The sky split open in pinks and golds.
Then I took a bitter café puya—watery, hot, too strong—and went straight to clean someone’s house.
It was quiet.
I was alone.
And as I wiped down the mirror in the empty bathroom,
I caught a glimpse of myself.
There I was:
Winged eyeliner smudged down one cheek,
under tired, chocolate-brown eyes.
Lips still painted faintly with last night’s story.
Hair curled just enough.
A little black dress.
The kind that makes you feel dangerous and soft at once.
I looked at myself.
And I smiled.
Not out of vanity—
but because even in exhaustion, even in labor,
I saw beauty.
I saw a woman carrying the stories of many women.
A woman who danced the night before and worked the next morning.
A woman who can do both.
The house was still empty,
so I decided to dance a little more.
Just me, the mop, and Marc Anthony echoing off the hardwood floors.
I danced like no one was watching—because no one was.
And for a moment, it wasn’t about the cleaning.
It was about the joy.
The movement.
The survival woven into rhythm.
The night had found me dancing.
But the morning found me, too.
Right there in that mirror—
I found myself.
And with me:
my mother,
my grandmother,
my sisters,
my nieces.
All of them.
Present.
Proud.
Moving through me.
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