By B.P.D.
She stands frozen in triumph,
bathed in gold, the weight of history
pressed into folds of her gown.
A monument to the fight she won,
laws she changed,
fire she lit when the world was dark.
Her name carved in stone,
etched deep by hands that barely
learned to hold her story.
But they do not read.
They do not wonder.
They do not whisper her deeds.
Instead, they reach.
A thousand hands, careless, amused,
brushing, grasping,
rubbing her breast into copper,
a tarnished relic of some quiet joke.
A woman still reduced to touch,
even in eternity.
Did she dream of this?
To stand unblinking, unyielding,
only to be worn down
by a history that still does not listen?
One day, the gold will fade.
One day, her story will be told
not in polished curves,
but in fire that made her
impossible to forget.
B.P.D. is a recent graduate with a degree in English Literature and lives in Flagstaff, Arizona. She hopes that her work will help with the understanding of the true mistreatment and disadvantages women and queer people deal with daily.