Featured in the 2022 Spring Issue of Rambunctious
Girlhood Sarah Feng, '22 I thought that growing up would be beautiful, That it would be a blossoming of my life, the start Of everything that I am, that I will be. But girlhood is violent and bloody, it’s the harsh Wind blowing in your face, reminding you that the world Wants you dead. “You have stolen my dreams”, I didn’t know my future was already dead When it was given to me, packaged as a beautiful Shining promise, “you can be anything, you have the whole world” But I know better now, I know that the minute you start To do anything, to speak, to act, the world you were given turns harsh. It kills you for simply trying to be. “You were born a woman and you’ll never be That free.” My destiny is to be hunted, always dead Last, dead tired, found dead on the side of the road, the harsh Fate of so many women whose crime was being too beautiful, Or not beautiful enough, or just daring to start A life of their own choosing, to create a place in the world. Cause it’s a crime now, to want a new world Instead of this one, that won’t ever set them free, won’t ever let them be Anything more than a start With no finish. Girlhood is when she grows up and finds out that she’s dead No matter what she does, a bitch, a pushover, weak, too loud, never beautiful In her eyes, because her eyes aren’t her own, they’re the harsh Judgment of the world, of men, of her sisters who strike her down with harsh Words because they don’t know that she’s not the enemy, that the enemy’s the world, The one they were born into, the one that tells them they have to be beautiful, When all they had to be Was alive. Girlhood is anger, depression, resignation to the start Of adulthood, to the fact that the minute they become women, no, before then, the hunt for their dignity starts. Who will save me from being consumed by the world, the harsh Unending bludgeoning of my soul to my death? How many girls have to be sacrificed to satisfy the world, What do we have to pay to make sure our daughters can be Their own heroes in a life that’s truly beautiful? Girlhood is growing up. It’s letting go of that beautiful dream where graduation is a beginning, a start, And arming yourself for what will be the fight of your life; a bitter, harsh Reality, but not in vain- for a world that would have let us all live.