Their stories filled encyclopedias.
Matched ranks on the shelf, leather-bound,
volume after volume,
cover to cover
packed with their achievements, their failings, their tales.
Wives to their husbands,
daughters to their fathers,
mothers to their sons —
and to their own wives and mothers and daughters, too.
Partnerships for the ages,
mentorships of legend,
and more —
themselves on their own
not captive in the strands
of relation’s net.
A history of men and women, together,
hand-in-hand, equal-footed.
We don’t even know his name.
There’s irony and justice in that.
From the pages of the past he erased their names,
Margaret here, or Susan, or Anne,
Jiao-no there, or Xiang-yu, or Lan,
leaving a great man’s unnamed daughter,
a wife from the family Liu.
A battle lost that she did not command.
Plays unwritten. Discoveries delayed.
Untold thousands, their deeds undone,
their selves reduced
to footnotes.
In names, there is power.
In namelessness, silence,
a history rewritten,
lost.