Not Like Weather

INTRODUCCIÓN HABLADA

I dreamed of my father.
I dreamed of his father before him.
Neither one spoke a word to me —
only watched,
the way the dead watch,
waiting to see what I'd do
with what I already knew.
I know what I saw in that street.
I have called it many things since.
Grief. Cowardice. A wound.
I never once called it what it was.

VERSO 1

I have walked this street a thousand times
Past the same door, the same dust, the same name
Called it luck when it went well for no one
Called it God's will when the well ran dry
Never once asked who dug the well shallow
Never once asked who let it stay that way
I watched a woman lose her home
And told myself the sky had done it
The sky did not do this.

ESTRIBILLO 1

This is not weather.
This was decided.
Someone signed their name to it
And someone let them.
This is not weather.
It has a shape.
It has a hand behind it
And I have finally seen the hand.

VERSO 2

I rode past the mill, past the crossing, past the church
Every road wearing the same quiet wound
A toll where no toll should stand
A number added where no number was owed
A man too frightened of tomorrow's visit
To ask why today's was owed at all
This is not one village.
This is the shape of a whole province
Taught, one small silence at a time
To call its own bleeding ordinary

PUENTE

I do not know yet what waits beyond this road.
I do not know the size of what did this.
But I will not call weather
What is, in fact, a crime —
Merely because enough people
Have stopped naming it one.

ESTRIBILLO FINAL

This is not weather.
This was decided.
Someone signed their name to it
And someone let them.
This is not weather.
It has a hand.
And I have seen the hand.

FINAL

Someone has to say it plainly.