A knee length scream rebounds down the empty hall,
The walls as bear as her legs, which bear her away from the roar.
Not far behind, another set of legs, another set of pleats,
This time the floor reflects polished black and matt twill
And a slippery set of sneaky misogynies disguised as paternal concern.
But a good father does not stare at his daughter's legs.
He worries, as does his running child, about the man who's gaze is perpetually set a foot or two below eye level.
But when it wanders, as it "always must," our daughter rebukes his lust,
And her first and last words muster the might of all daughters and sons.
And she stands on her chair, so that this time his eyes are looking level,
And bellows from the fog of anger that had been slowly settling about her uncovered ankles.
You can imagine how that went down.
So sprinting, whooping, echoing across the school,
Her cries of exhileration tug spirits out of rooms.
The path of the pin-straight Man is blocked by the faces of his children,
He trips on their blue hair, their white shoelaces, and their black denim hems,
And as he falls she rises, out of her skirt and above the regime,
For neither define her as a separate being,
Nor as a string in the weave that catches that pastoral shin
And catapults the shepherd into the stampede of the sheep.
My school is revolting in its obsession with skirt length
