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 Instagram
• Her bookstagram is @booksandbillis

Mentioned in this episode:

Write After: National Poetry Month with One Poem Only

Write 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. We'll get started in April. You can share to #WriteAfterOPO.

#WriteAfterOPO