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