DRAMATIC MONOLOGUE Poem: The Storm, by Amy Vile Junod

We are not the whisper of history,
We are the storm of what is to be.
We are not shadows, silent and weak,
We are the fire that dares to speak.

Still, they gather in their gilded towers,
debating rights that were always ours.
Still, they burn laws in our skin,
branding wars they said we couldn’t win.
Still, they cage what love creates,
as if steel can hold what fate dictates.

Bartering our dignity like a debt,
a promise spoken, then swiftly they forget.
They carve our bodies into battlegrounds,
marked by laws we never crowned.
But hear us now, our chains will break,
for we were born to rise and wake.

A woman’s body is not a field,
Not a war to lose or yield.
It is hers, her fire, her choice,
her truth, with thunder in her voice.

Love is not a line in the sand,
but more a wave that swallows the land.

So let them argue, let them fight,
Over unseen borders blurred by fright.
Over walls that crack and fall,
Over wars that end us all.

We stand, unyielding, fierce, and proud,
With our silence now roaring out loud.

For power does not lie in fists that break,
but it lies in those who will not shake.

We no longer wait, not pleading to rise,
We are the tempest in their quiet skies.
And love that’s unyielding, wild, untamed
will rise when all else burns in the flame.