Been afraid of the dark;
The girls in the circle sigh and drink their cola
(Alcohol is not tolerated in the presence of minors.)
Our younger siblings are still sleeping with night lights,
and our brothers will grow out of it;
our sisters will not, and we will teach them
how to use Mace and Tasers instead of night lights,
but there are no easy smiles around the glow.

Been accused of a crime;
Because they were girls when their fathers wanted sons -
the Tudor girls wept without crying and swallowed their fears
as they watched Anne's head roll across the wooden stage.
Decades later, they would be led to the gallows, and
Bridget Bishop and her sisters will stand upon blocks,
coarse rope around their necks, and they would scream
for someone to understand, to believe that
they were only talking, that they never expected their
closed curtain whispers to spill into the town and
poison the presence of others.
(The judge would not hear it.)

Been afraid to be myself;
My body, her skin, their hair, our persons -
All disregarded until we are deemed fit for standards that
were never voted on, never approved by
the voices of the people that others want to change.
Our identities - they are pictures that others do not want to see,
words that others do not want to hear cross our lips,
souls that others do not want to understand.

Been in love;
At least not like movies and books have expected me to be.
I've only ever been in love with the
girls that I came to know through
paper and pixels in static and ink.
I loved the girls with brain and wit to match
their beauty, the girls who could
lead and be defined by their successes
as opposed to their failures.
I admired their voices, their stories, how
they could unfold into wonderfully human characters,
someone I could aspire towards, and
as I grew up, they never fully left me;
I loved them still, finding them in the girls around me.
But somehow, for a society that loved to love so much,
mine was frowned upon.

Dreamed;
Science says that we dream during REM sleep,
but I say that you go beyond that, and can
be the person that you want to be
in life beyond your dreams.
When the bird is tucked in its nest before it learns to fly,
it dreams of the sky; when we are in the midst of growing up,
we dream of the universe, and of endless possibilities.
Boys and girls alike, mind and heart open
until we clip their wings.
GIrls aren't told that they are given restrictions to their dreams,
but life certainly writes it into fine print, and makes it
harder for a girl to reach her dream.
Even when they have beat the odds stacked against them,
they have been forgotten by history.

And never have I ever

Been afraid of coat hangers or raw wire hooks or
splashes of stinging acid marring my skin or
bruised knuckles striking my cheek
over                 and over
         and over                 again.
Never have I ever been afraid of a shadow or
a face that I have never known.
I'm one of the lucky ones.
There are words and screams that I do not know
and hurt that I have never felt.

Maybe this is a feeble way of showing that we care - that
sympathy is being sent across the globe,
but we are oceans apart and countries away.
Words die in your throat when someone else does,
and there's nothing you can do to stop that.
For now, all we can do is try to
hold each other's hands and stand together
to believe and work towards a better tomorrow,
because the only way we will ever see one is if
we fight for one;
and all across the earth,
girls will sigh together and nod to that.