On my nightstand a matryoshka looks at me,
Bright red and drawings all over it.
"You are just like me", she says,
And I understand what she means.

Underneath my skin there are layers of me
Different versions of the same girl
One beneath each
Some only see the surface,
The easiest part to see,
When I'm all I'm expected to be.

It takes a lot to see what's underneath myself,
To take each part and carefully observe.
Layer after layer taken away,
Leaving me wide open,
To try and self-repair.
Sometimes people forget
That it's so much harder to put something messy back together again.

But I promise there are more layers of me to see
I'm not just a woman,
I won't do what's expected from me
I won't surrender to the invisible fight of my gender.
Not all girls are the same,
We all have our own layers.

At the deep of the doll,
The center of me,
There is my core, all of which is me.
No more layers, no more lies
No more façade or stereotypes.

I'm just a girl, a russian doll.