Girls Will Be Women

a poem

They taught us fear
before they taught us fractions.
taught us to cross our legs,
lower our gaze,
and carry our bodies like broken promises.

We learned to walk fast
but not too fast,
to smile when we’re scared
so no one gets angry.
We were children rehearsing
how to stay alive
in a world that blamed us
for being visible.

They say don’t be dramatic.
but there’s nothing dramatic
about clutching keys like weapons
in daylight.
nothing theatrical
about checking locks on doors
before you even get in.

we laugh it off—
because if we cried every time
a man stared too long
or stood too close,
we’d never stop weeping.

they taught us silence.
taught us to be
the reason,
the problem,
the provocation.

boys will be boys,
they said,
as if violence
is a gendered inheritance.
as if our bruises were born
of biology, not permission.

but girls?
girls will be women
before they’ve even kissed a boy.
before they know what "no" sounds like
outside their own mouths.
before they stop sleeping
with stuffed animals—
they start carrying shame.

you don’t need to tell us
how to survive.
we’ve been practicing
since we were nine.
sick with the weight of what we knew
but couldn’t name.
alert without reason,
afraid without proof—
except the proof was always there.
just ask the others.

and when we do speak—
our pain becomes politics.
our fear becomes inconvenience.
they ask what we were wearing.
what we were drinking.
what we were thinking.
why were you even there?

Some of us still remember
the first time we said no
and it didn’t matter.
The first time we said yes,
just to stay safe.
The first time we stopped telling.
because we were tired
of not being believed.

boys will be boys—
a phrase like a get-out-of-jail-free card,
while girls will be careful
is stitched into our skin
like survival.

girls will be quiet.
girls will be nice.
girls will carry pepper spray,
shame,
and generations of whispered warnings.

but girls will be women.
and women will always remember.

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