To be a hero is no small feat
People love to think of heroics
A beautiful savior dancing across the sky
Or a battle worn soldier tripping over desert sand

Heros live in history
The books write their names
Everyone knows heroes from the past
Like old Lincoln or Roosevelt

But when I read
I do not see
Anyone around me
Any woman with her name
Shouted like the heros

They have no line of legacy
They have no past to follow
They are bound to the names of men
And so some work to make
Their own names their own

So I look and strain for heroines
And perhaps they glimpse on by
But never is there a heroine
Around me like the men
So I find their names
And hold them tight

Just like Sappho on Lesbos
And how they called her straight
But modern girls look to her
As a source of pride and fate

And Lyudmila Pavlichenko
And her 309 snipes to kills
Showed her feat in the face of men
Who sneered and called her frills

And Malala Yousafzai
Who fights for women's education rights
So they shot her in the face
but was never out of sight

And Michelle Obama
Who in the face of racists and names
Fought to give girls and kids inspiration
And has always fought the flames

But also Dr. Christine Baisley Ford
Who in the face of fear
Testified in front of thousands
Her nightmare as they jeered

And Deborah Sampson
Who enlisted in the war
In 1781 she hid herself in men's clothes
So that America could become more

Let's not forget about Elisabetta Sirani
Who defied laws written for women by men
She painted and thrived in her works
And gave art a woman's touch in the bullpen

And what of the fame of Mary Read and Anne Bonny
The pair hid their gender and led a pirate ship
They speculate queer activity and
Were feared more than the horses whip

But also Rosalind Franklin
Who found the double helix in DNA
And yet men have her fame
For stealing and saying it was they

And Nancy Wake with her skills
So hated was she by the Third Reich
That they tried to kill her and the Maquis with 22,000 men
And yet they failed to make the strike

Women have always been here
But also the ones with no names
Cast away from time
Flitted in between the lines

Heroines who we whisper about
Oh, they are there
Their memory respected
Not perhaps by the years
But by women who know their pain

Every woman knows their hurt
Because unlike men who have a line
Women have none to follow
So they care for every story
Because through centuries and centuries
They have had no history of their own

And so I look around me
At the pain and the deaths
Heroines who lived in fear
And yet bravery hit their doorstep

No matter the laws
No matter the hate
No matter the fear
Women have always found a way
And they are everlasting throughout time
Though you see it not

I see them everyday
The ghosts of their souls
Women not bound to time
They never die
They have created generations

I see the women around me
Stronger than real life
They have fought and strained and pushed
So that they are more than a wife

So without a line to carry me by
And without a history to know
I cherish heroines from before
And find their tales and hold them close
As if they were my own

They are all around
Their faces blending together in the crowd
As they march down streets
They are women just like me
More than heroes, more than men
They are,
Heroines without defeats