today, i wake up wearing an old band t-shirt and i’m sixteen again / pulling jumper sleeves over my palms / keeping my eyes on my feet / earphones in / willing myself invisible / refusing to step out of changing rooms in anything that clings to my skin / flinching from mirrors and cameras / nobody wants to stay too long at the beginning of a cinderella story / before the lenses and makeup and hair-flipping confidence / before the boys who call you a frigid ***** for expressing an opinion start to slide into your DMs / saying “hey, you seem cool, i’d love to hear you talk about feminism.” / but they’d love get you drunk first / love to get funny girl / cool girl / beer-pong and dancing on tables and witty comebacks / always-slipping-out-of-your-hands / let’s-tame-this-shrew-wild-girl / like yeah give this girl a stage but stop her if she makes you uncomfortable / we like a damsel-in-distress, big-blinking-eyes-trophy-wife / not the girl who stood in between her best friend and the ones who mocked her for her body / not the girl with bloodied lips instead of red lipstick / grinning, saying, “you’re going to have to go through me.” / nobody likes an ugly girl with a mouth full of words / so you learn to swallow them / be prettier, shinier, smoother / show them a piece of glass instead of dagger / lie in wait to turn the tables because you still remember / what it’s like to be sixteen and forced to look at your body as a liability / what it’s like to be sixteen and told your anger is embarrassing / just another teenage phase