Dear Emily,

Your words rest
in quiet proof
of an unfettered life.

Spared public shame
and private scorn,
never heralded: wife.

Not from your father
forced to cringe
from a stranger's touch,

Nor be belle
of any ball.

Life, for you, lay undefined,
waiting for your pen.

In your words lay
humble truths and
worlds yet unexplored,

a testament to
freedom, neither
cherished nor deplored.

No expectations
nor demands, no
pedestal from
which to fall--

One doesn't have
to have seen much
to have seen it all.