The female thoughts that society dismisses as hormonal teenage rebellion

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.

—-

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.