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Wombstorm: A Herstory of Hysteria
I. THE WANDERING
I was born with a life that bled—
a seafloor womb
dragging tides of fern
and marigold char
The priests brought saffron
and fear
crowning me with diagnosis
They said: She is too empty
They said: Fill her with figs
with seed
with stillness
They said: Her belly speaks too loud
Mute her
O Plato
old patriarch of phantoms
my body was no beast—
just prophecy you never learned to read
"The uterus is sad..." you wrote
but it was your mind that roamed
chasing shadows through a woman’s anatomy
it was your thought
that needed cauterizing.
II. INCANTATIONS IN LATIN
A midwife kissed my knees
with vinegar.
Galen’s ghost pressed salt…
into my tongue.
They labeled me:
widow's throb
seed-sick
womb-wept.
Symptomology—paroxysm
trembling
visions of color.
A bishop
marked my temple in salt
called the brand heresy.
I howled once
That was enough
When I bled
they baptized it "fit!"
Diagnosis: Uterine Fury
Treatment: Submission
O Saint Hysteria
patron of the misunderstood
deliver us from knowing.
III. THE YELLOW ROOM
Charlotte peels wallpaper
with the tip of her soul
Her husband counts the tendrils
Prognosis: Nervous Prostration
Prescription: Silence
sunlight
sweet compliance
The rest cure is no rest
It is a crypt
where nouns born before verbs
can be reborn
She climbs the wallpaper’s fabric
fingers quill-stained with meaning
They say: Her nerves speak rebellion
They say: Her ink is impudent
They say: Her mind mimics sanity
But her mind is architectural neuron
built to collapse into freedom
IV. THE CURE
Enter the doctor
iron hands—
his stethoscope tuned
to disobedience
Patient exhibits:
chronic resistance to role
acute melancholia
womb misbehavior
He prescribes
the bed
the child
the marriage that baits like a trap
He prescribes
the little engine of God—
a steel vibrator
brass-coiled
buzzing
administered with averted eyes
He says: You will thank me after
I say: The after is what I fear
Outcome: Managed symptoms
quiet mouth
Case closed
Symptoms abated
Creativity subdued
Marriage intact
He wandered my diagnosis
But it was you who wandered
V. BERTHA BURNS THE HOUSE
At Thornfield
I am attic-bound
kneeling among cracked porcelain gods
My name Misremember
written in attic dust
My hair
a fire escape—
braided exit
scorched prayer
I speak in tongues
of splinter and soot
I bite the pages
they wrote me into
Diagnosis: Madwoman
Prognosis: Containment
I am not lunatic—
I am ledger
I am not danger—
I am mirror
I am not wife—
I am wound
When I leap
I drag patriarchy
by the fringe
Let Rochester
cough in the smoke
The “madwoman” was not broken—
she was a prophet
censored for knowing too much
VI. POST-MORTEM
Sylvia slumbers
The bell jar was culture-blown
Virginia leaves stones in her pockets
not in protest
but to anchor centuries
Emily dashes
her poems into locked drawers—
dashes not periods
no diagnosis can follow—
“He hurts a little though”
she wrote
and that was enough
to stain a century
Syndrome: Excess of Feeling
Remedy: Erasure
Wordsworth sketches paralysis:
“She has no motion
no force...”
But we moved
even in stillness
We seethed beneath the bonnet
A woman on the subway
grips her throat—
panic coded as inconvenience
The doctor says
Yoga
Breathe
Smile more
VII. EPILOGUE: THE WOMB RETURNS
And now
unshackled
the womb returns home—
not to pelvis
but to page
A pen bleeds
where scalpels once threatened
In the margin:
We birth ourselves
We name the madness
We reclaim the scream
“There is no female mind…
Might as well speak of a female liver”
But behold
our minds—
volcanoes with velvet tongues
not organs
oracles
We are not hysterical—
we are historical thunder
We are her
We are howl
We are what survives the diagnosis—
naming not home
but heaven
Let them call it storm
Let them label it loss
We will write it as rebirth
In the silence
after diagnosis
listen—
that is the sound
of a thousand pens unsheathed.
Copyright ©
Daniel Henry Rodgers
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