It is easy to be a good girl

when you are five years old and loud,

your words tangling over and around 

and through everyone else’s,

but they don’t mind,

because nobody expects 

a five-year-old to be polite.

It is easy to be a good girl 

when you are seven years old and wild,

coming home from school

with dirt-stained knees and sand-filled socks 

and hair frizzing loose from your ponytail,

but your mother doesn’t mind,

because nobody expects 

a seven-year-old to be neat.

It is easy to be a good girl 

when you are ten years old and expectant,

trying on your sister’s makeup in front 

of the bathroom mirror,

smudged eyeshadow and too-bright lipstick 

and foundation caked too thick

on your forehead and chin

but you don’t mind,

because nobody expects 

a ten-year-old to be pretty. 

It is easy to be a good girl

until you are twelve and you wake up

and everything is sticky and throbbing

and red, red, red,

and your mother says,

you are a woman now,

you must protect yourself 

you must protect this gift,

you must be smart and careful

and good, always good

and you wonder why 

this potential to give life

must take away your own life,

because you deserve to live too.

It is easy to be a good girl

until you are thirteen and you learn

how to bite your tongue 

until it bleeds, 

how to smile in the shape of a lie,

how to to be content

with the scraps you’ve been given

because good girls should

never want more

and you’re a good girl,

aren’t you?

Aren’t you?

It is easy to be a good girl

until you are fourteen 

and not pretty enough,

not thin enough, not quiet enough,

and you wonder how you are supposed

to be enough for the world

when the world won’t even 

let you be enough for yourself.

It is easy to be a good girl

until you are fifteen

and you learn how to gut yourself

like a fresh-caught fish,

how to scrape and scour

the flesh from your splintered, 

starving bones

so that no one else will go hungry,

how to sacrifice yourself

on the altar of men,

how to burn so that the divine beings

above you can take pleasure

in your ashes.

It is easy to be a good girl

until you are almost sixteen 

and you are not good anymore,

just a girl, just yourself,

and that is enough for you,

because it has to be.