“We Didn’t Come to Be Quiet”

We didn’t come

to be quiet.

We came

to knock on doors

they thought were sealed,

to say the thing

they wish we’d swallow.

We came

with receipts,

with ancestors,

with a voice trained

in trembling truth.

We are not your polite revolution.

We curse in courtrooms,

bleed on picket lines,

and still show up

the next morning

with signs

and stories

and songs.

We have loved in alleys,

we have screamed in boardrooms,

we have buried our rage

too many times

to call it a phase.

It is not a phase.

It is the pulse of every woman

who wasn’t believed

but still told the story.

This fire?

Inherited.

Sharpened.

Sacred.

We strike matches

with our mouths now.

Burn down myths

masquerading as morality.

And when they say

“too loud,”

we say

“finally.”

We are not asking.

We are declaring.

That your shame

will not stick to our skin.

That your power

is not ordained,

it is overdue for reckoning.

That we are not

your daughters of silence—

we are your mothers of change.

So no,

we didn’t come

to be quiet.

We came

to make the world

loud enough

to hear us live.