A portrait poem (https://www.napowrimo.net/na-glopowrimo-are-nearly-upon-us/)
She doesn’t look like someone who changed the world.
If I didn’t know better, I’d say she just looks tired.
Worn down, worn out, worn thin.
But I do know better, and what I see transforms:
Strength at last able to let go, wisdom earned in pain,
the hard-lined, stark beauty of righteousness.
I know that I will never know her.
I know history, what others say of her,
What little she said of herself,
the accumulation of facts.
I know what I see, how she seems,
an agglomeration of my assumptions,
who I need her to be.
To me, her eyes speak of trials witnessed and lived,
hard held principles tested and enduring.
Survival.
She is a potent symbol of hope.
She was a person who lived.
I will never know what’s missing.
If it was before photography it is the opinion of the artist’s ticks under penalty of death, money, or coercion, what is to be the official icon to represent the person. History lies in a thousand words like a picture.
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