"the stories they never told"

If only I could not be so ignorant-

if only I could somehow read

the stories they never told;

the mundane is beautiful

as is the erased tragic

and I simply want to know

the narratives

that they could not write;

the wooden room

is filled with thousands of pages

of knowledge and a facade

of understanding

but we may never hear

the stories that were never allowed

in the scrolls or to be penned in ink;

we may never hear

the woman doing laundry

while the world falls apart around her

or the man who wanted to run

but became another one

of their paradoxically strong victims

or the one who was told

they could be nothing

and locked away, dehumanized,

in the room of beige and white.