[tw: slight mention of rape]
People don't give girls enough credit. I'm in nineth grade now, and the last time i studied a uniquely female narrative in English class was sixth grade. That might not seem like a lot, three years, but it is. The difference between 12 and 15, between girl and…
We're reading To Kill A Mockingbird now, and I was walking home one day, thinking about how Dill's hair was described as "duck fluff" or how Scout viewed reading as breathing, or what I'd help my mom make for dinner when–I guess I was frowning a little, deep in thought–someone, a man, a grown man, told me to "Smile, sweetheart!"
Odd, isn't it? Telling some stranger to at least look happy. You know, it only takes one more muscle than smiling to punch someone in the teeth.
Blood's better than tears, anyway.
Action over thought, thoughts left lingering, wriggling through veins and vital organs, trying to fight something you know is bigger than you, the cudgel which has bludgeoned countless before, because if there's no struggle, you lose the cold and broken hallelujah of "Well, at least you fought."
Don't tell sad girls to smile.
Don't tell sad girls to smile, because she might be the type who get cut by hip bones.
Don't tell sad girls to smile, because she might still be trying to scrub someone else's sin from her skin. Hot water, holy water, it all flows under the same bridge eventually, and the dead can only feel cold, so if she can feel the burning water then maybe, maybe—
Don't tell sad girls to smile, because by allowing herself to feel happy, she accepts that she knows the contrast too well, and if she does want to smile, then she does it for herself, or someone she can be vulnerable with, not some slack-jawed, hem-hawing, fish-eyed, patriarchal nice guy who doesn't find a frown appealing.
She might have a good goddamn reason to be sad, so don't you fucking tell me to smile.
It is not your mouth. It is not yours to consume, to kiss, to find comfort in when the windows rattle in a storm and your heart rattles in your ribcage like seeds in the dry earth, unable to grow without a little water, sunshine, and tenderness, and if you really want a sad girl to smile, then you hold her until you're drenched in perfume from the gardens you planted in her heart so that every time her wounds re-open, she bleeds bouquets.
But I am not yours to hold, and if you keep walking around telling sad girls to smile, no one will ever want to be.
And if you come any closer, I'll bite you, and smile red.
YOU ARE READING
various poems
Poetrythese are some poems i've typed up by various people. i do not own anything you will read in this story; it is simply for means of entertainment and anyone looking to do recitations or just read along the words. feel free to inform me of any mistake...
