being a girl is a wasteland

I like being a girl

But sometimes at night

I try to remember what it was like

To breathe without weight on my chest

The weight of imposed motherhood

Imposed like a visitor to a house

The kind of visitor you don’t want to come in

But if they force themself in

It’s your fault

Because your house is a provocative colour

So you were practically asking for it

So there’s blood running down your legs

Could be nature or nurture

Nature of my body that has pain built in

Nurture of boys

Boys who will be boys

But not all of them

But nearly all of us

Or nurture of beliefs

That what’s between my legs

Says anything about my purity

Fuck purity

Stop associating femininity with purity

Why do we act as if femininity is this soft delicate thing?

When we all know it’s not

It’s a war you didn’t enlist to

A bad dream you don’t wake up from

It’s a wasteland where flowers aren’t allowed to grow

It’s obligation to hypothetical men and hypothetical babies

It’s playing a rigged game

Where your chromosomes rolled a double

So you lost before you even got to play your hand

It’s your body being deemed public property

By people who don’t know you

And being given dead flowers

By a boy who forgot you had hay fever

So you’re crying and you’re sobbing

And you’re screaming and you’re shouting

And you’ve lost your voice

When you didn’t have one to begin with

And all you have left is flowers and no say

When all you wanted was a wasteland and stinging nettles

So you could breathe easy

by Denise