Let me tell you about Anne Yale Hopkins.

John Winthrop writes in his journal
in l645 that she has

"fallen into a sad infirmity from
reading and writing too many books.
If she had attended her household
affairs and not meddled in things
proper for men, whose minds are
stronger, she had kept her wits."

None of her work survives.
This is the only mention.
We must imagine her.

I will imagine you as Munch's screaming girl,
the trees swirling around your head
like the sky in a storm, your pen the funnel
for a cloud coming closer all the time.

How do we honor you, sister, friend?

Could we reserve a page in every anthology
and say, this blank page is for you
and for all we will never know of your world
and our own?

This page is for you,
so they cannot silence your silence.