You look at us and see girls,
Different heights and weights and hair colors and skin colors
Different religions, different abilities, different passions
But girls. Just girls. And that’s where you’re wrong.

Because the ******* my left
Holds a forest fire inside her chest
And she can burn down this entire city with it.
She can end the world and just keep burning
And if you aren’t afraid, you should be.

The ******* my right
Is a hurricane that never ends
Carrying you and your world away
To make room for the future. You better
Learn how to swim.

In front of me stands a girl
Of Kevlar, more bulletproof than any military invention
And she is a defender, a fighter, taking bullets
Meant for us and spitting them out with a smile.
No assault rifle is going to get
Through her.

Behind me is a girl who is also
A ticking bomb, waiting for just the perfect moment to go
BOOM.
She’s unpredictable and uncontrollable and undeniable
And when she decides it’s over,
It’s over.

I see a girl who is a
Whole star, casting light across our solar system
And warming our hearts. She
Holds enough power to end life as we know it
But she holds us in a tight embrace of love and pride.
Go ahead and try to **** a star; I bet you don’t know how to fight a nebula.

There is another girl, a
Wolf with her teeth bared.
She snarls and growls and holds the line back
And, fair warning, she’s tasted blood and she is
Never going back.

And me? I’m something old and ancient
That can’t be seen, only felt, sometimes heard.
A whisper in the dark of the woods,
An unexpectedly cool breeze on a warm day.

“Just girls,” they call us. But when they come for us,
They realize just how wrong they were.