Migdalia Cruz

Storms That Bring Deeper Water: an essay with forbidden words

All that I am is banned. 

They are trying to disappear us.

Will they succeed? 

I am an accessible, activist, advocate for human rights.

I prefer an all-inclusive world, where we operate in allyship with all humans who are anti-racist, assigned female at birth, assigned male at birth, and those who choose to reassign themselves. 

I grew up in the South Bronx labeled an at-risk place for at-risk people who created a barrier keeping the richer and whiter among us away and safe from a perceived contamination with us.

I belong wherever I want to belong and despite biases I am proudly still here.

I am a BIPOC, bisexual, biologically female, Nuyorican, who has one foot in a colonized island and another in a ghettoized borough of New York. 

My ancestors respected nature. Historically, they would have seen how the storms are making water too deep for humans and know that Climate science is necessary before we all drown. You see?  They lived through climate change.

I breastfed my daughter in a public place without shame and vaccinated her for every disease possible because I believe in Science.

I believe in women, and women-aligned non-binary, sapphic people choosing how to use their bodies and how to protect them.

I think sex workers have civil rights and should be protected with labor laws.

I want to live in a diverse community, with gender equity that celebrates our cultural differences, heritage, genders, and is sensitive to who we are and who we came from. I applaud diversity, equity, and inclusivity in my community so we can grow into a non-discriminatory, non-judgmental world which embraces all humans with all kinds of different abilities that are no longer thought of as disabilities—we are all able in our unique ways and work toward enhancing diversity by fostering inclusivity, equality, and environmental quality.

I believe our cultural and ethnic expression are necessary to our mental health.

We must end gender-based violence, which preys on the most vulnerable among us and encourage gender-affirming care and health parity.

There is only one name for the Gulf of Mexico: Gulf of Mexico.

Hate speech is anti-human. Latinx and Latiné people are a part of America.

Hispanics are too.

Who is the real minority? And the real majority?

Aren’t we all immigrants unless we are Native Americans who are the only original people of the Americas?

We can make the world better by increasing diversity, honoring the indigenous communities, recognizing the institutional racism that still haunts the United States due to its enslavement of Africans forced to immigrate to the United States for economic greed and the enrichment of the white population. 

How do we cure the illness of inequity and injustice 

that has ravaged and defined the American way of life?

If there was a vaccine for it, I would take it.

Why are we afraid of what LGBTQ represents without acknowledging the importance that inclusion will bring to our souls?

Does marginalizing people give one power? 

Who is the minority that you need to crush to feel important?

Why are multicultural, non-binary, pregnant people, pollution, prejudice, sexual orientation, political, trans people, people with uteruses, poor people—why do these types of people, concepts, and truthful descriptive words, offend some people so much?  Why does the majority prefer to keep all these words—and people—caged, confined, hidden, and buried? 

What is there to be afraid of? 

Who is afraid to value all human life equally? 

I am all that is banned and I feel now more than ever how important it is to belong to the human race—with my uterus and all. 

I had trauma in my life, but I am not a victim. 

I grew up poor, but I’m not a savage.

I am free and powerful because I am all that is banned.

If the world is so afraid of me that they must silence me and try to take away my culture, dignity and history, then I must be truly powerful.

Let me hold your hand as we learn again to sing words of love.

Let’s just sing louder.

As read to the Gulf of Mexico from Manasota Keys, Florida, November 2025, for Erik Ehn’s Words of Love for the Fall of Freedom