How many Issac Newton’s have spent their lives washing dishes?
How many Beethovens have spent their lives bent over kitchen sinks
instead of pianos because they had the misfortune of being a woman?
How many poet’s pens have turned into brooms and dustpans?
How many lawyer’s briefcases turned into grocery bags because they
too had the misfortune of being a woman?
How many surgeons’ hands have mended broken homes, not broken bones?
Nursed the wounded souls of their husbands while theirs bled dry?
How many architects’ blueprints have been crumpled into grocery lists,
building futures for everyone else but themselves,
their ambitions turn to an unheard whisper.
How many voices that could’ve moved mountains were taught
to whisper low, taught that silence is a virtue, but boisterous boldness
is unbecoming on a woman?
How many women swallowed their thunder, taught that
only men were allowed to summon storms?
How many discoveries never saw the light of day, tucked behind
egg-stained aprons, sewn into the seams of frilly dresses because
the world decided their worth wasn’t great enough.
But how well she made the food, how often she cleaned,
and how silent her distress was.
How many canvases remain white, not for lack of color
but for lack of freedom?
How many symphonies remain unsung because society willed them
to fade into the background, a deafening silence?
And how many mothers have become bent, cracked, and damaged
under the weight of it all? Bearing not just children but the burdens of generations.
Her dreams crushed under the foot of tradition, her brilliance not seen
in history’s pages, forgotten and unspoken.
How many minds have died in the quiet, not from the lack of thought,
but the lack of space to grow?
From the lack of getting the chance to be someone more than “his wife”.
How many times will we ask, “What could she have been?”
Before we realize we should be asking “What stopped her from being?”
For every woman who was told no,
Told that she shouldn’t.
Told that she couldn’t,
We mourn a million wasted lifetimes and the fire of a million more.
The time of silence is now ending.
Kitchens and cradles aren’t bound to the brilliance anymore,
No more Issac Newtons scrubbing floors,
No more Beethovens silenced behind closed doors.
We are not misfortunes.
We are the revolution.
And our genius, once hidden,
will no longer be ignored.
Savannah DiDonato-Garr is currently an 8th grader who lives in Delaware County and is heavily educated in political topics. She is an avid reader and traveler. Savannah lives with her mother and her dog Charlie. Savannah loves to learn about history, true crime, and the state of the world today. She also dreams of becoming a Forensic Psychologist.