I was born into a world that loved small things -
tiny waists, tiny bites, tiny voices -
Girlhood was supposed to taste like cotton candy,
light enough to dissolve on your tongue.
But mine tasted like the metal of measuring tapes
and the salt of swallowed shame.
I remember the first comment -
but heavy enough to bruise.
Words shaped like a compliment,
weighted like ankle irons.
I carried them everywhere,
dragging through classrooms and sleepovers,
leaving trails like a wounded animal
pretending it wasn’t hurt.
Every mirror was a funhouse mirror
One stretched my stomach,
I studied reflections like scripture,
searching for forgiveness
in the shape of a jawline
Girls around me were petals -
opening, light, effortless -
while I felt like the stem, thick and necessary,
but never the part anyone pinned in their hair.
Even when boys laughed at them,
they still got to be flowers.
Food was supposed to be just food,
but for me it was a courtroom.
Every bite called to the witness stand.
Every craving cross-examined.
I learned early how to eat in private -
how to fold hunger into my sleeves,
press appetite between pages like a wildflower
so it looked delicate when found.
There was always someone watching:
a relative with a tilted head
and a too-long gaze at my plate.
A friend’s mom offering salad
before I’d even asked for lunch.
A doctor who didn’t look at my eyes
for an ache that had nothing to do with it.
I became fluent in the language of shrinking:
No thank you. I’m not hungry. I already ate.
when the truth is treated as a crime.
my body grew like a haunted house,
full of rooms I was afraid to enter.
Hallways echoing with old insults,
attics stuffed with memories of dressing rooms
basements flooded with all the times
I pretended I wasn’t starving.
so no one else could use it against me.
I learned to take up less space in conversations
since I could not take up less in the world.
I learned to disappear in photographs -
tilting, twisting, hiding behind friends
as if I could unravel myself
But girlhood does not pause
for the bodies that weigh more.
still wanted to be chosen,
still wanted someone to reach for my hand
without looking both ways first
The cruelest thing was this:
people thought they were helping.
they believed they were saving me
was a lifetime supply of shame
But instead I write poems like this,
evidence bags filled with moments
I was told were “no big deal.”
I hold them up to the light -
the comments, the stares, the hunger -
tiny crimes committed casually,
but cumulative enough to constitute a life sentence.
Some days I feel like I’m still on trial,
called to testify against my own body.
The jury is everyone I’ve ever met.
The judge is the voice I inherited -
asking if I’ve tried being less.
The verdict never changes.
It’s always “could be better,”
always “guilty of wanting,”
always “guilty of existing wrong.”
when the courtroom clears,
when the gavel stops echoing
against the bones of my ribs,
and I step out of the witness box.
Because maybe the truth is this:
I was never the defendant.
I was the crime they invented
so they didn’t have to look at themselves.
The punishment they rehearsed
because it was easier than mercy.
because they never learned
how to read anything with tenderness.
but refusing to plead guilty
to a body that was only ever trying
And if this life is a courtroom,
then let this poem be my deposition,
a record that outlives the accusations,
a truth sworn under the weight
of every year I spent believing
But the girl inside me didn’t.
She still sits in the dressing room
with fluorescent lights buzzing like flies.
She still flinches at unkind laughter
even when it isn’t meant for her.
She still measures worth in calories,
beauty in the space between her thighs
there is something sacred
about surviving this kind of girlhood.
About carrying the weight of a world
that told you your weight was wrong.
About learning to hold hunger
without letting it devour you.
I know now that my body is not an apology,
It remembers every comment,
because someone else was watching.
and still it wakes up with me.
Sometimes, when I’m quiet,
I think of that young girl-
long before she learned to speak.
And I wish I could tell her:
for people who were never enough.
turnnoffyourmind
dededos
2087
kaledo-art
stormborns
jbbartram-illu
annaxmalina
