POEM STARTER
‘Softness is to anger what rain brings to snow.’
What does this line make you think of? Write a poem structured and themed around this line, so that it fits in naturally.
Girlhood
My girlhood began the first day I was told to sit with my legs crossed
Because it wasn’t very ladylike to sit with them open
But the boys.
Sprawled across the floor and covered in mud
Would always go unspoken
And the first time that I knew my girlhood meant weakness
Was when teachers needed help moving tables across a classroom
And asked if there were any strong boys to help
And dear not look at the girls in the room
And soon girlhood became boys being bullies
And your mother telling you
It’s because they like tou
You can’t remember when love and abuse became synonymous
But I imagine it was around now that this became true
Girlhood is hating your parents at 14
And yet somehow hating yourself even more
It’s secret kisses in the backs of the crowded parties
And the first time you are casually called a whore
Girlhood is discovering beauty or female friendship
Even though it takes you a thousand tries
It’s sleepovers with 16 people crowded into a spare room
And by midnight
12 of you have cried
Girlhood is being told this classroom is not a hairdressers
And that we should be intesting and not care so much about our looks
But when we don’t try
We are ugly and lazy
It’s being told that it’s not quirky to be into books
It’s being told that we cannot have passion or interests
Must be nails and makeup and hair
But then this makes us too shallow
And you are not allowed to point out that this is unfair
Girlhood is having a hair tie on your wrist
Knowing it was not yours to begin with
It’s having your notes app being full of pre typed out texts
You read them over and over
But knowing you will never send it
It’s having numbers saved in your phone from girls you met on cubicle floors
It’s holding the hair back of someone you do not know
And being passed a tampon under the toilet door
Girlhood is wondering if you tell your mother you lover her enough
Contemplating If she knows how grateful you are
That she made glue from her strength and somehow held this world together
Like cement
And I wished I believed her when she told me she’d done this before
Girlhood is the message sent and the phone thrown across the floor
It’s promising you don’t have a crush on him
Because it’s to selfish to ask for anything more
Girlhood is wondering if you are pretty enough for the internet
For anyone to simply take up space
It’s sitting in front of the mirror for hours
And poking and prodding at your face
Girlhood is the beauty of confusion
The passion of not knowing who you are
It’s being all the things they tell us not to be
It’s being expected not to flinch when they leave a scar
Girlhood is painful
And blinding
and sad
And beautiful
And supposedly not even that bad
Although it’s only for men that tell me this
And the perfect fucking mess of girlhood
Is something they will never have