The first day I was a girl was in my backyard with my brother picking up brush to burn in a pile and my dad said I had to put a shirt on that summer even though it was hot and my brother was shirtless and I was six or seven and helping clean up the backyard and it was a wooded lot down a long gravel drive and there was nobody to see it but I was a girl in that heat and always would be.
Stevie Edwards, “Girlhood,” published in The Offing (via lifeinpoetry)











