Category : Poems

Sub Category : N/A

“You can be anything you want to be. You can even be president of the United States one day.”
One Day.
A vague timeline.
It’s a story as old as female.
•
When I was 9 I beat a 10 year old boy named Austin in the school spelling bee. Parents and teachers and classmates clapped, and I felt proud in my young life.
When I was 10 boys in my grade tried to “pants” me. I gathered all my youthful courage and used my 5th-grade vocabulary to tell my teachers that I had been made to feel afraid and uncomfortable. 
They told me I was lying.
Exaggerating. Boys will be boys. They must just like you.
"You are a very smart girl with a lot of potential. You can be anything you want to be.”
Except honest.
When I was 11 I found dark red blood between my legs, and I was gleeful.
I wanted to be woman with every fiber of my tiny being.
As strong and beautiful as my mother, my grandmother, my favorite teachers and actresses and writers.
When I was 13 my principal told me
“Your shorts are too short.”
I’m wearing the same shorts as all my friends.
He told me “But you cannot dress like the other girls. You are more of a woman.”
The word fit in his mouth like something mildly unpleasant.
Woman as an inconvenience.
Woman as something to cover up.
He told me, “You are a very smart girl with a lot of potential. You can be anything you want to be.”
Except curvy.
•
“You are a very smart girl with a lot of potential. You can be anything you want to be.”
Except loud.
“You are a very smart girl with a lot of potential. You can be anything you want to be.”
Except sexual.
“You are a very smart girl with a lot of potential. You can be anything you want to be.”
Except hairy.
“You are a very smart girl with a lot of potential. You can be anything you want to be.”
Except nasty.
•
When I was 18 I went to college, and I met a new set of educated, talented, stunningly passionate women who invaded my ideas of this thing I desperately wanted to be. 
They told me “You can be anything you want to be.” 
And I wanted to be just like them.
•
Womanhood finally came when I learned that woman is me, and I am woman, because I choose to be so.