Turn the page
There is a class in the future.
The children look
as though they were born of war.
Because they were.
Not from bombs alone,
but from generations
who fought
for their right
to become children at all.
Their teacher opens a history book.
It reads
There was a time
when genocide
could disappear beneath cleaner words.
When history called lynching
a suicide.
When entire peoples
were erased twice:
once from the earth,
and again from the page.
Turn the page.
There was a time
when women across the world
held different passports,
different laws,
different freedoms
yet nearly every one of them
knew what it meant
to be underestimated.
Turn the page.
There is a woman
walking warehouse aisles
with a child asleep
against her shoulders.
Turn the page.
There is a woman
working in a mine
while her child learns
that hunger is louder
than lullabies.
Turn the page.
There is a mother
answering emails
while her daughter
plays on the floor,
learning too early
that survival
sometimes sounds
like keyboard keys.
Turn the page.
There was a world
that called them
simply women,
as though motherhood
were not labor.
As though love
were not work.
As though carrying
another human life
left no marks.
Turn the page.
The book says
they were expected
to love men who hurt them.
To respect employers
who saw motherhood
as a liability.
To apologize
for exhaustion.
To shrink brilliance
until it fit
inside a meeting.
Turn the page.
The book says
people asked,
“How hard is it
being a single mother?”
Almost no one asked,
“What are you building?”
“What do you know?”
“What have you survived?”
Turn the page.
The children are quiet now.
One raises a hand.
“Why didn’t anyone help?”
The teacher closes the book.
Some questions
are too large
for history alone.