The Missing
Read more poetry by Britt Wolfe
There are voices
history never heard.
Not because they had nothing to say.
But because the room
was built
to ignore them.
Entire futures
went unwritten.
Entire discoveries
died in silence.
Entire revolutions
were folded carefully away
into drawers labelled
not for you.
The world speaks often
of the geniuses it produced.
But rarely
of the brilliance
it refused.
How many ideas
were dismissed
because they arrived
in a woman’s voice?
How many solutions
were laughed away
because the person speaking
was not the right colour,
the right gender,
the right shape
of acceptable?
How many poems
were never written
because the poet
was taught to shrink?
How many leaders
never stood up
because the door
never opened?
There are libraries
that should exist.
Shelves filled
with the thinking
of women
who were told
their minds were ornamental.
There are symphonies
that were never played.
Paintings
never painted.
Medicines
never discovered.
Languages of kindness
never spoken aloud.
All of it
missing.
Not lost.
Missing.
Taken
before it had the chance
to become real.
Because prejudice
does not only wound
the people it targets.
It robs the world
of everything
they might have given.
The scientist
who was never funded.
The teacher
who was never hired.
The writer
who was never believed.
The child
who learned too early
that survival
requires silence.
And so the world moves forward
celebrating progress
while carrying
this enormous absence.
A quiet graveyard
of voices
we never allowed to live.
And the saddest truth
is this:
we do not even know
what we have lost.
Only that the world
feels smaller
than it should.
Quieter
than it could have been.
As if somewhere
just beyond our hearing
there is a chorus
of missing voices
still waiting
for a world
that would have listened.
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Poetry by Britt Wolfe:
History often celebrates the voices that rose to prominence—the inventors, leaders, artists, and thinkers who shaped the world we inherited. But far less attention is given to the countless voices that were never allowed to rise at all. Across generations, systemic bias, prejudice, and exclusion have quietly erased possibilities before they could even begin. Women dismissed because of sexism. People of colour ignored because of racism. Individuals silenced because of their gender identity or who they love. The loss of these voices is not only a personal tragedy—it is a collective one. The Missing mourns what the world never received: the ideas, brilliance, creativity, and compassion that were pushed aside before they had the chance to exist. 🖤