We called them by their names—
woman, brown, poor, queer,
as if naming the wound
could soften its sting.
We were taught to listen
to the echo where lines cross—
how power splits,
how pain multiplies
when one body carries more than one burden.
But maps are only sketches.
They mark rivers, not the drought.
They draw cities, not the distance
between a body and its right to breathe.
And even theory,
no matter how sharp,
can miss the child too afraid to speak,
the mother too tired to write,
the man whose grief cannot fit a term.
Some things do not come with footnotes.
Some truths don’t publish well.
Some people are left outside the page,
waiting.
There was a man once—
not in a lecture hall,
not on a panel,
but in the dirt,
breaking bread
with women called sinners,
with men who reeked of failure.
He didn’t ask for citations.
He touched the wound.
So yes—
study the systems.
Trace the fault lines.
Say their names.
But remember,
justice doesn’t always speak English.
Mercy doesn’t wait for theory to catch up.
When the words fall short,
when the papers are filed and read and cited—
what’s left
is the quiet work
of loving what’s broken
without needing to fix it first.
In the end,
there is no perfect lens.
We see in part,
through fog and fragments.
But we walk on.
Because even when
the knowledge runs out,
what remains is Love.
And Love,
does not forget.
Competing Interests
None declared.