She Matters
by Cathy Oddie
Fourteen women gone in 2025,??
Each name a cry, a life no more.??
One hundred and three in 2024, their stories end,??
In violence, in terror—when will it mend??
?
The news comes like a storm,??
A crashing wave that drowns the soul,??
Fourteen lives, stolen in silence,??
One hundred and three names,??
Now etched in sorrow’s scroll.?
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Each one— a heartbeat,??
A voice, a dream,??
A world of possibility,??
Felled by hands that claim control,??
But cannot silence what she means.?
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Her laugh, her love,??
Her strength, her fight—??
Every life lost,??
A flame snuffed out in the night.?
And in the wake of their absence,??
I am torn—??
The grief too heavy,??
The anger too raw,?
?For every woman and child,??
Murdered in a world so flawed.?
?
I weep for them,??
For the violence too entrenched,??
For the faces I’ll never know,??
The lives too soon to end.??
And in my own scars,??
I see the echoes,??
The past still chasing,??
The fear that never goes.?
?
My heart breaks, yet it cannot rest,??
For each death rips open my chest.??
Their murders echo what I’ve survived,??
A reminder of when I feared being deprived??
Of breath, of safety, of my own light—??
When their hands tried to take my life.?
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And I ache, I weep, I rage inside,??
For the lives that should not have died.??
It triggers the pain, the past that still claws,?
The torment, the terror, the unspoken laws??
That men believe give them the right—??
To steal a woman’s peace, her life.?
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But I will not let the darkness win,??
Though the weight of grief pulls at my skin.??
I am here, I endure,??
For every woman lost, for every heart impure.??
My survival is my fight,??
To show the world that I have a right??
To breathe, to speak, to stand tall—??
I won’t let them see me fall.?
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They mattered.??
Every one.??
Each heartbeat, each dream,??
Each life was stolen,??
But they matter still.?
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She matters.??
In every tear, in every scream,??
In every breath, in every dream.?
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You matter.??
In your pain, in your fight,??
In your hope, in your light.?
?
I matter.??
I stand, I rise,??
I am alive—??
And I will not be erased.?
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Stop killing women!??
Stop the silence,??
Stop the rage that rips lives apart.??
Even one death is too much,?
Our voices won’t be still,??
We are more than the hurt they’ve inflicted—??
We are the strength, the will, the will to heal.?
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She mattered.??
She mattered.??
She mattered.??
And I will never forget.?
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You matter.? I matter.? We matter.? ?
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Stop the killing.??
Stop the silence.??
The time for change is now—??
No more lives lost,??
No more hearts broken,??
We won’t wait any longer.?
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Enough is enough!?