The Weeping Woman
by Kendra Paredes Hayden
(forthcoming in Natural Bridge)
Goddess Cihuacoatl is the patron of women who die in childbirth and of miscarried and sick children.
The Weeping Woman
La Llorona
or
Cihuacoatl
Cihuacoatl knew the child she carried died one day when the air changed to the color green, and she no longer felt
the magical presence of another’s spirit within her.
Some nights, Cihuacoatl and the Cihuateteo, the powerful goddess women, fall from the star-filled sky toward earth.
The Cihuateteo are all women who lose their lives during childbirth. They glide and slide around her never touching
her always guarding her. She staggers down the street weeping and moaning, “The thorn lies in my hand. The
thorn lies in my hand.” Her wailing mouth is like a hole ripped in cloth, a yawning torn place that lets her agonies
pass in and out. Her salty tears fall and everything she ever was falls out of her.
Cihuacoatl leaves an empty cradle with a sacrificial knife laid beside it in the marketplace. The people know she has
passed because the air is thick with the spirits of children and mothers dead. The living sing, “Our mother, warrior-
woman. We are your children. The thorn lies in our hands.”
by Kendra Paredes Hayden
(forthcoming in Natural Bridge)
Goddess Cihuacoatl is the patron of women who die in childbirth and of miscarried and sick children.
The Weeping Woman
La Llorona
or
Cihuacoatl
Cihuacoatl knew the child she carried died one day when the air changed to the color green, and she no longer felt
the magical presence of another’s spirit within her.
Some nights, Cihuacoatl and the Cihuateteo, the powerful goddess women, fall from the star-filled sky toward earth.
The Cihuateteo are all women who lose their lives during childbirth. They glide and slide around her never touching
her always guarding her. She staggers down the street weeping and moaning, “The thorn lies in my hand. The
thorn lies in my hand.” Her wailing mouth is like a hole ripped in cloth, a yawning torn place that lets her agonies
pass in and out. Her salty tears fall and everything she ever was falls out of her.
Cihuacoatl leaves an empty cradle with a sacrificial knife laid beside it in the marketplace. The people know she has
passed because the air is thick with the spirits of children and mothers dead. The living sing, “Our mother, warrior-
woman. We are your children. The thorn lies in our hands.”
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