you wrote anyway by Abhilasha Ghosh

you wrote anyway Abhilasha Ghosh july 25th, 2025 you were told writing was a man’s terrain— ink too heavy, thought too sharp for your soft hands. so you wrote anyway. you became george eliot when mary ann wouldn’t be taken seriously. they admired your mind but never called it yours. you were the brontë sisters, signing as currer, ellis, and acton bell— three pens dipped in restraint, writing women with thunder in their hearts. you were ismat chughtai, on trial for obscenity because you dared to speak of women as if we had bodies and stories and agency. you were christine de pizan, arguing with dead philosophers in the 1400s, building a city of women while the world tried to burn it down. you were savitri bai phule, carrying chalk like a sword, spitting in the face of caste and patriarchy with every lesson you taught a girl. you were elisabeth vigee le brun, painting and writing through revolutions, surviving exile with a brush and a spine. you were madame de staël, banished by napoleon for being smarter than he could stand. you turned your exile into a library. you were sor juana inés de la cruz, writing plays and poems in a convent in mexico, hiding brilliance in lace and latin. you gave up writing— they said it was your choice. you and i both know it was surrender in silk. you were marina tsvetaeva, writing poems that blistered like prophecy while the soviet air turned cold around your mouth. you were anna akhmatova, smuggling words through iron bars as your lovers and sons disappeared. you were sylvia plath, and they romanticized your death before they honored your craft. you left poems like razors on every bathroom tile. you were virginia woolf, handing every woman a room of her own, while your own mind became too loud to live inside. you were octavia butler, writing the future because the present refused to hold you. you were nawal el saadawi, telling the truth of women’s bodies and being cast out for it. you were toru dutt, begum rokeya, kamala das,— the subcontinent’s burning pen passed down like a secret blessing. you were too brown, too bold, too bare, too brilliant, too loud, too angry, too strange, too sad, too female. they called you excessive, unladylike, difficult, political, emotional, hysterical. and still— you wrote. in exile, in shame, in hunger, in prison, in the dark, in footnotes, in funeral clothes, in jail cells, in schoolhouses, in shame and in secret. on scraps, on borrowed typewriters, under threat, under pressure, under no illusions. and now— we write because you carved the path with your teeth. and now— we write in the space you tore open with your bare hands. we do not write to please them. we write because you did. we sign our names because you could not. and every sentence we shape rings with your echo— proof that survival, in ink, can be immortal. More from Abhilasha Ghosh ↓@abhilaxxa on InstagramHer bookstagram is @booksandbillis Mentioned in this episode:Write After with One Poem OnlyWrite After is a way to encourage poets to listen and write, and use National Poetry Month to highlight how listening to poetry makes us better poets. I know I write the best when I’m surrounded by beautiful poetry–it’s part of the reason I created this podcast, and I want to encourage others to share this practice. If you want to join: Listen to a poem from the month of April on One Poem Only, then write your own in response. I will pick one for each day to read in June for a special series: One Poem After 🍎🍏 Submissions close May 15.Write After Submissions Form