there’s actually a flower a peony named lorelei it’s lovely very pretty with its delicate little petals like pink teardrops but I get so g*****n tired of being a flower that sometimes I could just scream and burst open with lightning and fire and rain and rage because I love being a woman and sometimes I love even being a flower but

"I cut my hair because I wanted a change!"

but being a woman is covering yourself for their comfort crying on staircases first short hair then pepper spray in the girls bathroom your friends teaching you how to throw a punch because your father never did your father only taught your younger brothers how to fight hate staring at parts of your body you despise being a dandelion or a daisy or a paeonia lorelei

"I cut my hair so I wouldn’t be catcalled a few weeks after I turned twelve."

yet you are a woman and it cannot be helped when you are a woman you can barely even help yourself when you are a woman you are helpless when you are a woman you are less and less and less until you are barely anything at all barely even a memory of the girl you once were before you learned how cruel the world of men would be to you when you are a woman

"I thought it would save me from that part of being a woman and maybe be easier to maintain."

maybe a woman is not a woman at all i think that i am meant to believe that a woman is a target and a man is a loaded gun there is no chance to change the rules there we don’t get to have a story or write the narrative because we don’t do things they just happen to us and we sit there and take bullet after bullet shot after shot straight to the head and to the heart because i suppose our bodies are not ours and i suppose our delicate fingers could never rest on the trigger but i am so sick of being nothing but nice

"I have kept it short for years. I guess I just didn’t want to look like a target most other girls."

maybe there was a part of me that died every time those things happened maybe I thought I could just snip that dead part off with a pair of scissors depollute myself before the darkness spread through my body which i suppose is not my body according to some people but it was too late it was always too late because having short hair changed nothing because the only way to survive is to always work twice as hard stay a step ahead always the golden child always the perfect student say yes to every opportunity say yes to all that is asked of you and you will do it with a smile plastered on your face

"There were so many knots in the underneath parts, the parts no one could really see, that I was tired of trying to untangle."