Girl Call
I was a girl, meaning
not allowed to touch my own body
if it pleased me. Not allowed
to bleed and show it. I had to hide
the blood and all its cousins.
I had to lie about it. On our farm
I was allowed to be dirty, but I
could not be strong. When I reached
my full height, I was not allowed
to own what I knew of where the
briars broke my skin, how the
green paint inside a blade of grass
got inside the scratches, left me prickling
when I went to bed without a bath.
Fragile is what they called me instead.
But I remember, anyway, how I grew
up in the woods, inside of books, burned
my eyes looking up at the sky
and I touched what I liked, and I bled
when I was ready, and I was rarely
your idea of clean, but whatever you
thought clean was, you were wrong.
published in The Fieldstone Review, Issue 13: 2020 / 2021
reprinted in Arlington Literary Journal, Issue 163: August 2022