girlhood is clinging to each other, heads on laps and intertwined fingers.

girlhood is crying with each other, over love or sickness or the depth of life and the end of it all.

girlhood is eating ten potato chips, nine cubes of cheese, eight skittles,  seven apple slices, six chocolate chips, five small pickles, four carrot sticks, three ibuprofen, two cookies, and one tangerine.

girlhood is feeling a desperate need to get out, go far, be free.

girlhood is realizing your friends are similar to you but also so beautifully and insurmountably different.

girlhood is figuring out how to be good in a world that thinks there's nothing you could do to make that happen.

girlhood is rolling on the floor laughing at the dumb romcom playing on the tv.

girlhood is ignoring the yelling from behind you, walking faster even if you think you'll trip.

girlhood is sitting in the school office after getting dress-coded.

girlhood is hating someone but defending her to any length when a boy wants to say something bad.

girlhood is having weapons within reach.

girlhood is scary, beautiful, confusing, meaningful, formative, trivial, important, connective, loving, hating, all the feelings all at once.

girlhood is ours.