young girl, why do you cry.

Young, weeping girl; young, despairing woman;
circle girl with soft curves and no edges
in a hard line, square cut world;
twisted girl both backwards and forwards,
both the silent child and the screaming adult—
always confused and unknowing.

The images that flicker through her eyes
are those of long ago movies, simply one take
at a time: take one of two girls in the dark, swaying
to a beat, yet their position is odd, is off, and
she gently corrects them with a soft voice -
and is told that the right way is only for a man
and a woman; take two of protesters of a god that
has left us all behind and they point the finger,
the sign, the spewing hateful speech,
at lovers and family members and fighters
who do not look like them and she, pretty
but little girl, stares and wonders what their
god would say now.

Her eyes stay open, wide and full of dead stars,
and marvels in awe at the grand display, but it
is not awe-full, but awful: take three is of marches
for peace, marches for love, for an equality
that is deserved yet is denied for—the wingless
girl could not tell; take four, a still frame, but
this is of herself, her mother loving but distant
as she drags her away from her older brother,
and this is when that small, hopeful child became
a young, clueless girl - she does not yet know
the comments her male relatives make, but she
will recognize the tone until her dying day.

(Even then, she will not understand why they
said them at all.)

She is now a weeping girl, full of unknowns
and shaking heads; she does not understand
offense or the words that carry it nor
the want to use them - doesn't understand
her own body and why she isn't allowed
to understand her own body and why
the boys raise their voice at her and her
friends even when she is shrunken down
to the smallest thing she can be - doesn't
understand why everything is still in
black and white when colored print has
been used for decades - doesn't understand
why love has to be one way - why her body
has never been hers so why does everyone
call it that - she does not understand
anything and she understands that.

Her world spins backwards, her home simply
a house to sleep in, and she does not
know what to do - she is so out of depth
that it has made her scared of the ocean,
so she turns to the fire instead and finds
that she likes it more because drowning fills
the body while burning leaves nothing
behind—she wants to leave nothing behind.

Some birds were meant to be caged,
but her wings were cut off years ago, taken
from her by another young, weeping girl
who turned to the skies, but unknown wings
don't fly; she tumbled to the ground and
hasn't gotten up since.

Young, glowing girl; young, sparking woman;
songbird girl with feathers of fire and eyes
cut from amber and diamonds;
clawing girl filled with fangs and claws and
pouring tears of sulfur and flames—
you are ready to burn it all to ash.