The intersectionality between woman and girl
I could say that I am a woman now,
Although the neighbors still call me “girl.”
What marks my transition from girlhood to womanhood…
the day I received my first period?
Then I would have become a woman on my tenth birthday
While all my classmates remained girls.
When does the woman abandon her girlhood,
trading her Junie B. Jones books and muddy, grass-stained sneakers
for the desire to be validated by the status quo?
To be a woman,
Courageous, tenacious, and beautiful
Yet still misunderstood as the girl,
Colorful, inquisitive, and naive.
For the girl lives amongst the toys
And the woman is treated as if she is one herself.
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Last names
Mama has warrior blood coursing through her veins.
Some people will say that her fire was innate
while others think it’s because she was the first to receive an education.
Mama never intended on putting out her sparks
that ignited best in sandy deserts
and areas deserted of intrusive thoughts.
Mama was never docile and the world knew so.
Yet when she birthed a daughter
who fought like an Amazonian soldier to stay in the womb,
she shocked all the people in the room.
For this daughter was no less filtered than her mother
Her infant wails sounded more like warrior cries,
and every entity in that birthing room trembled with fear.
Every soul but her mother’s, whose eyes brimmed with proud tears.
Mama guarded her daughter as a queen to her crown jewel
And her baby grew up to be a carbon copy of herself,
always a fighter although a bit feistier and a bit less cool.
It was the feistiness that made her form questions,
that even her mother could not answer.
It was the curiosity that made her wonder
that after all the nurturing she was provided by her mother, her twin flame,
why was she labeled with Papa’s last name?
“It was not necessarily my will to name you like that”
“Well, it should have been,” I slam my bedroom door shut and inch my body deeper and deeper under the duvet covers of my queen-sized bed.
Editors: Emily X., Joyce S., Nadine R., Anoushka K.