Brenna McCord
Grades 11-12 Honorable Mention
Blood and Bone


I was born with a noose around my neck. I was born to be seen and not heard.
I was taught to be delicate,
to make myself small for the comfort of others. Because every woman knows that the witch hunts never really ended.

My many-greats grandmother was Rebecca Nurse, who was hanged in Salem for committing no crime. My history is stained with black magic and bones. The blood of witches runs in my veins,
and the tragedy of their short lives and early deaths festers in my heart.

We have been taught since we were girls to keep our mouths shut. Not to talk too loud or be too sharp or dress too bold.
Because a woman without restraints is a dangerous woman, so you keep us chained with the weight of your expectations, and you crucify us for breaking free.

We’ve fought for the strength to raise our voices against you, your groping hands and wandering eyes.
All across the world, we sisters are joining hands. I’ve been hurt, too, we say. I’ve been burned, too.

Me too.

Yet still you cannot stomach my fury. You call me emotional, hysterical.
To engage with my ideas would be to acknowledge my power, and so you attack me for what is between my legs
instead of what is between my ears.

Of course I am angry.
My wrath is bought with blood and bone. I have paid for this rage,
the same way my mother and grandmother paid for it. The same way every woman in my family has paid for it, tracing all the way back to Rebecca Nurse.
Tracing back farther than that.

This poem is black magic.
My words are a curse, not a plea for mercy. I will not beg you for anything.
I will not prostrate myself before you.

My ancestors died so that I could write these words without fear of persecution,
yet still I know you will crucify me for them.
You don’t realize that I am already hanging from the end of a rope,
legs kicking,
hardly able to breathe.
You don’t realize that I have already been burned.
Every time I stepped out of line, you attacked me with sticks and stones,
and now your words bounce off my thick skin.

And then there are my sisters:
The women of color you have tortured, murdered, enslaved. The trans women you beat and degrade,
because a woman is nothing more to you than a womb on two feet.
The women like me who love other women,
who you see as a threat because we have no need of you.

I wear the insults you have hurled at me like war paint. It is blue like the water you drowned us in,
brown like the dirt of our unmarked graves. It is red like blood and white like bones.

I confess freely—I am a witch born of witches. Their blood is my blood,
their pain my pain,
their legacy mine to shoulder. And we are angry.
We are angry that you kept us gagged and chained for so very long.
We are angry that you beat us down every time we try to rise. We are angry that Salem profits off our pain, selling witch hats and trinkets on the ground that was watered with my ancestors’ blood.
We are angry that you deny us our anger.

I have only one question for you:
Are you afraid of what you have created?