Don’t grow up.
Grow down,
deep into this earth.
So deep you forget what part of your body your heart belongs in.
Be nothing except wet earth.
Be an open mouth. Be a seed.
Be every language our ancestors ever spoke.
Be a dialect ten thousand years old, and still breathing.
You woke up one morning and asked me,

“Am I pretty?”

Please be spring.
Be new blossoms and the way the ground smells after rain.

My mother came to me and told me we were giving you away.
Before you had even taken your first breath,
she said we couldn't do this.
Take care of another baby, when our backs were already broken. Poverty was a ***** word we shared sheets with.
I told our mother, that you were already ours.

That you could never really belong to anyone else.

And we kept you.

And when you were born, you had these eyes.
These, ocean kissed sky, and slept all night, kind of eyes.
These eyes that told me that we all come from the same place.

These eyes that said
“Ive been here before.
Ive done this already.
Get ready for this.
Watch me.”

And you’re eight years old now, with a broken leg, and you've been screaming for two months.

And I cried the day the car hit you.
And I laughed when you woke up.

And you’re eight years old, and I haven’t stopped believing you belong to me.

This cocky, loud, screaming mess.
This spaghetti stained, angry little monster.
This bully, who swallows her own meanness.
You've got a venom about you kid.
A house set on fire, inside you, kinda crazy,
sometimes I can even smell the smoke.

I haven’t stopped believing you belong to me.

And I wanna tell you,

You don’t owe anyone beauty.

You aren't in in-debt to some universal credit collector.
You don’t owe anyone make up, or 40$ worth of hair product.

You are the best kind of disaster.
You are laughing until you cry, and secrets you promise to keep but never do.
You are irrevocably yourself, and no one else,
and

******* It Little Girl,

You are beautiful.
The best kind of beautiful.

But I am afraid.
Afraid of what 8 years looks like, when it meets ten, and four more. When you’re tall enough to see your reflection in the bathroom mirror.

What you will do to yourself.

I pray to God.
I pray you meet someone who teaches you to love yourself.
Because I know you are still angry.
Angry at this world, and your life.
Its like you walked into an overcrowded room,
and no one noticed you
and you haven’t let us forget what we owe you.

I pray to God you kiss your fingertips.
Bless them for each meal they give you.
There is nothing more intimate than feeding yourself.
Baby, counting calories is no way to live your life.
There is nothing more ancient than a sunrise.
You are a horizon, a tissue papered sky,
do not cut pieces of yourself away.
You are not ******* gift wrap.

I pray to God you listen to your own voice.
See strength in the way your body never gives up.
That you are Iowa,
illegal fire *******,
set off in our backyard.
You matter to me.
That you are red and blue police sirens.
You will make people nervous.
Get used to it.
You will shake the ground with your voice.
Get used to it.
You are powerful, the way the ocean is powerful,
the way it devours cargo ships,
air craft liners,
churning up lost Atlantis’,
turning stones into sand,
and swallowing this planet slowly.
That you are meant to exist.
Remain.
Endure.
That you are beauty.
That you are billions of atoms.
My solar sister.

You belong to me.  
But baby, you belong to you.
Own this.
Take it,
like a testament,
and write it.
Put it in a box and save it.
Mail it back to your own house, and read it.
Be it.
Breath it.
But please,
please,
don’t ever forget it.

Six girls.
Four bunk beds.
Freshman year.
College.
We are all nervous.
Elbows and knees. Awkward.
Like being packed into a cattle car.
Rewind 6 years.
Homeless, living in the back of a minivan.
Three children, and our mother.

Sleeping together in a single motel bed
Nervous for morning.

Elbows and knees.
I am built for building.
Made to create.
Hands like carpenters, I make a home out of anywhere I go.
Learned to carry it on my back.
To take things with me.

And now, I am almost nineteen year old and I have been living out of boxes for the past two months.

Out of containers filled with my own clothing.
I feel like I can’t find stillness.
Or have silence.

I haven’t been alone in two months.
I am sleeping with the lights on.
They call this temporary housing,
For all the students who applied late.
Like me.

But I didn't think I would be here.
But I was raised poor,
remember the minivan,
so a free college education tasted like..
Like you’re starving, and your mom’s food stamps haven’t came in yet, and you’re at the grocery store,
and its Saturday,

and they’re handing out free samples.

And I feel lucky.
And I feel blessed.
And I feel grateful.
And I feel slighted.
And I feel frustrated.
And I feel tired.
And I feel angry.

Angry that I am this easy to tear down.
That I am ticker tape,
salvage yard,
construction zone.
That the four walls of the home I've tried to build inside of myself can be so easily burned down.

Can be destroyed.
A fire alarm in my chest, and a flooded basement.
That I can’t find peace in the only home I've ever had.

There are motel signs.
Blinking,
three am,
and my mother’s credit card is being declined.
And my little sister won’t stop crying.

And we are in a homeless shelter when I’m 6.

And we’re in another when I’m 8.

And another when I’m 13.

I’m 19 in a few months,
And this dorm feels like another one.

And I’m convinced they build these places, on purpose.
Temporarily temporary.

To show us how temporary we all are.
That we can’t take anything with us.

That I can't take anything with me.

Where ever it is that I am going.
Where ever it is that I might end up.
I’m just praying..

Praying there is a warm bed to sleep in when I get there.

The following is a quotation.
"In the emergency room, they have what's called **** kits where a woman can get cleaned out."  
-Texas State Representative Jodie Laubenberg

Dear Mrs. Laubenberg,

I have never felt so betrayed by another woman before.
And I know this was your attempt at a prolife argument.
But you don’t understand anything about your own anatomy.

Unlike you, I know my own body.
The home I've created here,
inside myself,
these shoulders,
hips,
scars,
and stretch marks.

Believe me when I say - I am my own war memorial.

So let this body be ready to be broken.

I will give birth to umbilical cord nooses.

Hang myself with my own womanhood.
Blood soaked ******* and blue and black bite marks.
I will never be anyone’s victim.

I was built - hand crafted by some creator - who knew he was breeding me for war.

Let this body be a graveyard to all my past lovers.

Let it be known that I was built for destroying things just as often as I create them.
The lipstick I wear is the same color as blood.
I was made to devour.
A caged animal in my throat.
A growl asleep in my chest.
A ribcage built for holding me captive because I'm a savage animal.

Do not call me weak.
A ***** bites.
A ***** swallows her prey alive.

So don’t you dare push my knees apart into metal stirrups, and
“clean me out”.
Do not bandage my wounds.
Do not wipe me clean of this recklessness.
Do not cover these bruises.
Let me stand, a testimony to what they have done to me.
To us.
My wounds will not be silent.

I want you to look at me.
At us.

We need to carry these battle wounds with us.

On my college campus, we have been broken in like cattle.
We know the scent of fear.
We’ve been branded black and gold.  
We were told to carry mace like an accessory to this sin.
To never walk alone at night.
To travel in packs.
To carry weapons.
To carry guns.
To carry our femininity concealed because bare thighs are dangerous here.

Each week is only finished when a ****** assault paints my campus crimson.

**** is a hate crime against weakness.

So I’m taking back femininity and I’m deciding what it’s synonymous with.

And never again will submission mean woman.
Never again will girl mean powerless.
Never again will tenderness be considered vulnerable.

I am a flower on ******* fire.
I am Mother Nature,
Thousand watt lightning storms and forest fires that could turn you into dust.
You cannot break me.

Every 90 seconds a woman dies during pregnancy or childbirth.

So yes, we are used to giving this thing called life, our absolute everything.

There are 400,000 untested **** kits in America alone.

So yes, I know, Mrs. Laubenberg.

I know you picture women’s bodies like machines,
cold,
hard,
metal.
Something than can be deconstructed, cleaned, and put back together.
But I am a human being, and I don’t assemble easily.

****** assault belongs to the survivor.

How dare you try to white wash your own guilt and try and file our stolen femininity under blood slides and nail scrapings.

You are a woman too, Mrs. Laubenberg.

And I know, these hate crimes look like girls in short skirts to you.
They look drunk.
They look *****.
They look like *** workers caught in fishnets.

They look deserving.

But Mrs. Laubenberg,

They also look like your sisters.
And your mother.
And your daughters.

And if something isn’t done to change this,

Maybe

**They might end up looking like you.