Founding Mothers

On the Capital’s Mall,

tourists are dwarfed by giants—

bronze and marble fathers,

larger than life,

ordained by the heavens,

their ideals carved white into stone.

Behind each founding father,

in his long cast shadow,

stands a First Lady,

a founding mother—

no voice, no light,

sometimes unwilling,

a wife, a mother,

a ghost who knows

that to lead is hard,

but to serve is harder.

Locked in windowless basements,

banished to attics,

sent uptown to outrun scandal,

they wore gowns lined with silver and gold,

stitched tight with paranoia and fear.

Forced into the narrative

but denied their voices,

they laid the foundation

only to be censured,

then erased altogether—

trapped beneath catacombs of marble,

forgotten in crypts of stone,

working to erase

the roles pressed into their bones

by their god, their country,

their husbands.

They dance with the devil in the dark,

freed at last by blinding flames—

spirits slipping their trappings,

burning their prisons to ash,

their memories unable to rise again.

Damnatio Memoriae.

Returned to shadow and ashe,

their sooty fingers

smudge the pristine pages of history,

leaving secrets that blister the foundations,

watching quietly

as the world continues to burn.