The Curse.

My mother called it the curse, because her mother did.

The curse. A word that conjures images of witchy women stirring a pot of some secret boiling liquid, casting spells meant to hurt people. Once a month, The cauldron in my belly bubbles over with fear and anger and pain and too much of everything. I hold it because it is mine, and there is nowhere else on earth it can be, but with me.

Since I became an unwilling witch at the age of 8, I have hidden my cauldron. Wrapped it in bedsheets and heating pads, soaked it in too-hot showers and stirred it silently and with disdain, hiding inside of the glowing red tent that is the rest of my body. I was safe there. Alone, with no one to point my spells at but myself. Like a wounded animal, I hid in my own cave and waited for the blood to come, howling hoarsly as the tide inside of my cauldron rose with the swelling moon and then receded. Each new moon, I emerged.

Two years ago, the cauldron stopped bubbling over, and instead began to grow. It swelled and sweated for nine months as I carried it, and then you rose up from the steam. You; my most miraculous and perfect conjur. White magic, where before there had only been black. You tumbled out into the water of my highest tide with wide black cauldron eyes, and we became a family. My cave was no longer my own, and I began to hold the cauldron with one arm, and you with the other.

The cauldron slowly shrunk back down, but it’s shape had changed, and was harder to carry. I continued to hold it and stir, attempting to contain the boil. It bubbles over in the morning, when you wake in your crib and call out for me, and I struggle to hold you far away from the flames. The steam scalds your dad instead, curling up into lips that form words I don’t mean. A curse, indeed.

My darling daughter, you too have a cauldron. Tiny and black and gleaming with newness, it sits inside of you. One day by the light of some distant moon, it will begin to boil and your tide will rise. By then I hope to have answers, some way to lower the temperature and calm the waters enough to navigate them together. A witch still, but a wise one. I will teach you to howl at that distant moon with the fury of a wild animal, and not a wounded one.

For now, I search for a lid, in vain. Each lid I try clangs and clatters in protest on the rim of the cauldron, rising with the bubbling froth and disturbing the silence of the early morning like an impolite houseguest in our steamy cave beneath the blood moon. I am a ruthless and predictable tide, ripping through our calm sea. Like the tide, I cannot promise to remain the same. like the moon, I will wax and wane and remain, an anchor in your sky.