"If I Can't be a Girl" by Nina Bartlomiejczyk

If I can’t be a girl,

at least teach me to write

like Maya Angelou,

and let my confidence

strike fear into the beholder.

Teach me, then, to draw

like Georgia O’Keeffe,

and let my flowers be so that

one could smell them through paper

and feel them shudder at the touch

of the wind in the page that turns.

Teach me to paint the canvas

with a palette of blood--

the strokes so vibrant, angry, exacting,

and if I still can’t be a girl

at least let me pretend.

(Even mixed with drab white

there is still a fierce crimson in pink.)

Let me be like the others:

beautiful, outraged, electric,

skirt ripped and frayed at the sides,

fist raised, shaking, to the skies.