"the stories they never told"

They wove stories together,

stories with power

that hailed from dusted books

that still boasted fingerprints

from the centuries before

and yet they never told my story,

they erased the narratives

that they wished away,

their guilt and shame

overtook them to rewrite history

so I wish to lift the voices

of the ones we never heard,

there had to be someone

out there

who experienced life

like me,

perhaps the quiet housewife

who never spoke

but always cried

or the woman

years ahead of her time

who spoke her truth

and wrote her wish

of an equal future

or maybe even the ones locked away,

with screams turned to whispers

and silence forced into compliance-

who were we?