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.
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