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Good Girl
It is easy to be a good girl
when you are five years old and loud,
your words tangling over and around
and through everyone else’s,
but they don’t mind,
because nobody expects
a five-year-old to be polite.
It is easy to be a good girl
when you are seven years old and wild,
coming home from school
with dirt-stained knees and sand-filled socks
and hair frizzing loose from your ponytail,
but your mother doesn’t mind,
because nobody expects
a seven-year-old to be neat.
It is easy to be a good girl
when you are ten years old and expectant,
trying on your sister’s makeup in front
of the bathroom mirror,
smudged eyeshadow and too-bright lipstick
and foundation caked too thick
on your forehead and chin
but you don’t mind,
because nobody expects
a ten-year-old to be pretty.
It is easy to be a good girl
until you are twelve and you wake up
and everything is sticky and throbbing
and red, red, red,
and your mother says,
you are a woman now,
you must protect yourself
you must protect this gift,
you must be smart and careful
and good, always good
and you wonder why
this potential to give life
must take away your own life,
because you deserve to live too.
It is easy to be a good girl
until you are thirteen and you learn
how to bite your tongue
until it bleeds,
how to smile in the shape of a lie,
how to to be content
with the scraps you’ve been given
because good girls should
never want more
and you’re a good girl,
aren’t you?
Aren’t you?
It is easy to be a good girl
until you are fourteen
and not pretty enough,
not thin enough, not quiet enough,
and you wonder how you are supposed
to be enough for the world
when the world won’t even
let you be enough for yourself.
It is easy to be a good girl
until you are fifteen
and you learn how to gut yourself
like a fresh-caught fish,
how to scrape and scour
the flesh from your splintered,
starving bones
so that no one else will go hungry,
how to sacrifice yourself
on the altar of men,
how to burn so that the divine beings
above you can take pleasure
in your ashes.
It is easy to be a good girl
until you are almost sixteen
and you are not good anymore,
just a girl, just yourself,
and that is enough for you,
because it has to be.
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