đź–¤ Girls, girls, girls! đź–¤
writing·@katrah·
0.000 HBDđź–¤ Girls, girls, girls! đź–¤
 Being a girl is complicated. Being a girl means swallowing rusty crucifix nails to fight your way through things you do not want At ten years old, my words to Christi was; “drinking lime juice can stop you from fainting”. In our grade twelve year, she injured her head, saw birds and stars, maybe some hearts too. She ended up drinking an entire bottle of lemon juice. She vomited on her kitchen floor, but she couldn’t tell if it was from the concussion or from Lemon juice sitting in her stomach. Their house doctor told her parents; “All the girls try throwing at some point” 🖤 Remember the first time one of my friends came to me? Eyes so red that I thought she inhaled the desert. She said her father has cancer. She said her home was an open grave, waiting to be filled. She said she could never deal with that kind of absence. An absence so loud nobody could speak. I think about her every time someone says the big **C** word with no home, instead of “please god save the parents. Please god, haven’t enough of us suffered.” 🖤 Some Saturday nights my friend and I would get all dressed up like we were going somewhere, anywhere. But we would only sit at her house and watch Disney movies. But when FieFie showed up with a black eye again, we all said nothing about it. We were too young to make fists out of baby girl fingers, I think. 🖤 Some young girl on the tram was reading a book I loved. We started talking about it. She is a feminist, she said, gave me a smile like a thousand Steem dollars. She is one of those people who make you feel good about yourself. When she readied herself to get off, she gave me a little wave. I said “Go stop violence!” and she laughed. Hanging off the back of her bag was a little pink can of mace. 🖤 As female children, we were taught to be secret “defend-each-other” types. We are going to smother and hold the world down until it starts to like females. Well, is there not something bold about being defiant? There is something about having soft petal skin and still showing razor sharp teeth. 🖤 I remember from my childhood, my aunt. A body wrapped in towel, saying; “It’s not as bad as it looks,” 🖤 He was tall and geeky. When you asked him a personal question, his Face turns red. That summer, he asked if I wanted to go out to the pond in the woods. I blushed and confessed that I couldn’t swim, with that he gasped as if he’d been punched. He picked me up so easily and put me in the trunk of his car. We were laughing. Years later, a black stranger the same size would scream from his car idling, “Hey mami, wanna come home with me?” 🖤 I met this one girl passed out on a couch, her dress hiked up around her hips. She was displayed in her own vomit like art. “Let’s keep walking,” my friends said, “Don’t get involved.” But I couldn’t. She shivered in the shower I put her in. Her skin was so blue around her eyes, I thought maybe she’d slipped the sky in there. She looked terrified, like a wet kitten. I asked her how much she drank, she couldn’t say. I asked her how she got here, she bit her lip and shook her head. “My friends….... Just left,” she said, “They just left.” Sometimes friends are like that. 🖤 Late at night I heard Natasha crying over the words of her father. She once told me that if it was a choice between being born dyslexic and being born without eyes, she would choose the latter one. I whispered something of an apology that fell as fake as I felt, we don’t talk about it again. 🖤 Jack Skellington hands never stop shaking me from slumber. Sometimes I think I might be drowning and sometimes I think maybe I’m just painted that way. There’s never an excuse not to be dainty. Someone once told me that beauty is painful. 🖤 I remember those lips and how they were bright red, because the words out of them were sickly green things. Nicky said she’d swallowed ninety-nine Adcodol two days before. She said they’d filled her with charcoal and had her spit back up the blackness that was swelling like a river inside of her body. 🖤 At fifteen, I towered in heels that hurt to even look at. I was taught to feel fierce, on fire. Maybe Ipainted my lips blood red and kissed the mirror and spend ages just getting ready. It was the fun part of parties. It was the stupidity of teenagers. 🖤 My friends spine cracked while she rested her head on my leg. “Let’s never get old, okay?” She said-asked, and I told her that sounded great. Sometimes in the darkness, she really sounded serious about not getting old. I wanted to ask her if she was fighting bigger demons than the ones I can raise, but before I found out, she moved away. 🖤 Did I really belong in the group that was all punchline. Someone says, “teen girls, am I right?” and laughter spreads like ripples through the room. 🖤 I remember the day that we found out that they hurt one of our friends, because that is the day you find out that you are not really safe either. 🖤 She looked so wholesome, but was that was the problem? Her makeup was not even smudged. I watched her tell the story. Six, eight, thirteen times to officers who shuffled papers and sniffed at every other word and sighed often and looked at their watch even though they were the reason she was talking. They asked her what she was wearing, she gestured to her body: jeans, t-shirt, hoodie. They asked her if she knew him, she said no. They asked her if she provoked him, she said no. They asked her if she told him to stop, she fell silent. After a while, she’d try to explain the fear that crept up her throat until she had choked. They only sighed but asked for the story again and again, and again. She had this look on her face that I still dream about, it looked like something sucked her soul out. 🖤 A waiter looking down my shirt and saying, “Just a water for you, huh?” Ballet class with pin-thin shaking hands and bathrooms that smelt like a bad neighborhood. A teacher who said, “Don’t eat unless you faint.” You get used to cigarettes in the hands of young girls. You get used to the addictions of “only seven hundred crunches to go.” You get used to seeing this stuff until one day someone asks you why you know how many calories there are in a grapefruit. The media proclaiming; “Lose weight, feel great.” “If you’re not pretty, you’re not worth discussing.” Spend your money.” 🖤 My mother arguing that there’s nothing wrong with this system. Love 🖤 Katrah 