Little girls say count my daddy’s money
Lest we forget who reigns.
The sacred order written on the bathroom wall
To be adhered to,
Unless we pass the bottle
Until we can’t think
Until we are the reason she cries tonight
Little girls who throw caustic words
Who lacerate with secrets
Because you deserve to feel unbeautiful
We do it because we can
Because we wake up
And we’re too sick
Too tired
To face what they face.
We skip and we cheat and we lie
Because it feels good not to try
But the smack of reality will come
Harder on our cheeks than
The words that rouged them
When we are forced from behind romantic gates
Where little girls repeat mistakes
A crumbling utopia
whose guardians claim to protect us from lying, cheating little girls
Whose reputations ate me.
And spit me back out,
Transformed and transfixed by the power of assumption.
Laughing with your clouded little girl eyes, it’s hardly tragic.
But I lay feeling irreparable, dreaming.
Glares sharp as a honed dagger,
Thrust from savage palms into my feigned self-worth.
I remember how you sold me on the promise
that I’d be the heroine,
but my story remains unwritten
and the venom permeates and pulsates in my veins,
until sin is sin, broken only by
toil and sweat.