We thought we’d be powerful
We’d twirl in short skirts and sashay in thick heels
we were powerful and fierce
buildings bled into concrete floors and yellow skies.
Apparently the city is no place for a little girl.
He had strong hands and dark skin
I asked if he believed in reincarnation
He frowned. Apparently I didn’t ask the right questions.
In 8th grade, all I could think about was kissing him
I wondered what music he liked
I wrote bad poems
meanwhile there was a girl at party having sex with a man three times her age
when i look surprised as she confided she laughed
and waved it off with an arm full of scars
her eyes were cold as she tugged at the sleeve of her jumper
her soul bled out down the bathroom drain
all blank stares and foreign rooms
she shifts from side to side
apparently Id done the wrong thing
When I was 14 the girl I liked wanted to kill herself.
I’m fat her eyes screamed. I’m worthless she sighed.
Her insides laid on the bathroom floor
you can trust me I’d said
I’m bulimic she told me and when I asked what that was she turned away
Apparently I couldn't be trusted
In my first year of teenage hood the boys we’d always crushed on asked us to flash them.
We’d giggled and whispered and shot tentative glances.
We flirted as best we knew how.
Later Id shiver when they sat behind me on the bus
Loud voices they'd touch and yell and dictate
They made us feel uncomfortable
Apparently we shouldn't let it get to us
I remember the boys down by the river
I remember scuffed shoes and bruised knees
I remember the flowers that grew from our naivety
and the scars that bled from our curiosity
I remember the youth, I remember the freedom
I remember the loss.
Then there were the roofs
the days we were lonely
or our minds were too loud
We’d sit on the roofs and gaze at the sky
taking comfort in its false permanence
in the indescribable enormity of it all we’d find peace. we’d find hope
the days we were happy scream of night skies and freedom
a blur of cinemas and late night restaurants
our parents not knowing where we were.
When we’d run just far enough to be at peace for a night.
Sometimes there’d be music, soft brush of the sea
skin, fingertips, lips and teeth
banging cubicle doors and fluorescent lights
mismatched groups of strangers
Stars.
Then there were the dramas
a bounding pile of exam papers, boys and exclusivity
there were whores and assholes and sluts
there were the steel gates that hid the crumbling school
where the state of the grass mattered more than the state of the students
and girls lay stretched out on the warm tarmac of the tennis courts.
Stories here whisper and die out
If you listen hard enough you can almost hear the ghosts.
There’s bleeding love and sick sick privilege
and the fingerprints of those now free
and the walks.
The endless talking.
Scrawled letters of our deepest thoughts.
between the lines screeched anxiety and love and happiness and the idea that we might of just
figured everything out.
All at once.