Teen Writers
ON HOME AND BODY
By Kyla Pollard
You do not blame the house for how it reacts to an intruder
For how an alarm goes off
And yet it is still unable to protect itself
You do not blame the house for how it is unable to speak
For how it can not say “Me Too”
After it has been robbed
You do not blame the house for the way it parades locked doors
And High fences
Do not blame the body for how it reacts to trauma
Blame the cause
Blame the intruder
For how an alarm can go off
And is still unable to be heard
Do not judge the body for loving the way it does
Closed arms
For the way it parades locked doors
And high fences
Look at the shots that have been Fired towards it
Look at the hands that have left prints on its valuables
Look at the battle wound that love left on it
Or how love made the body a home to invite lies into
Do not beat it up for how it chooses to heal
For the way it scars itself a closed wound
For the way it flinches back into a prayer
And shuts the door
(Growing Up Female)
By Sylwia Szopa
When I was 5 I was told to play with girl toys
The ones that were pink
And the ones that sparkled
When I was 6 I wasn’t allowed to play with a boy
Because they were rough and rowdy
And I could get hurt
When I was 7 I was told I couldn’t be a race car driver
Or a mechanic
Because those careers were for boys
I could get dirty or hurt
When I was 8 I was taught to stay close to my parents
Because a strange man would kidnap me
When I was 9 I was told I could never go anywhere alone
Because it’s not safe
Always have an adult
When I was 10 my parents told me about girls that went missing
As a warning
When I was 11 my parents told me stories about girls that got raped
Because that could happen to me
When I was 12 I practiced screaming as loud as I could
So maybe someone could save me
When I was 13 I learned the best place to kick a man
So maybe I could get away
When I was 14 I learned to get out of zipped ties
When I was 15 I carried my keys between my fingers
And I mapped out routes to my house just in case
What have we done
We raise girls to be delicate
And then we expose them to the real world
We take their childhood away
Because boys will be boys
And girls will be careful
THE (MEXICAN) GIRL LEARNING HOW TO BREATHE IN AMERICA
By Jazmin Gonzalez
I swim in the sea of ignorance
Searching for a breath
But all I see is that all they see is my ethnicity.
All rrrrrolling r’s and accentitos
Todo broken English y spanglish.
And all I am trying to do is breathe.
Breathe through Mexican family parties,
Full of kids who’ve never known the real Mexico
And have lost their Native tongues,
And no longer understand “their” culture.
And full of older generation
Full of old ways of thinking,
Old accents, old tongues,
Old views.
Trying to breathe through people telling me
That my roots make me
A criminal, a thief, wrong
When all I’m trying to do is breathe.
Breathe through the smog surrounding me
Trying to suffocate me,
Hold me down
Because I’m a girl.
I try to breathe
Through the smog
Created by hearing a father tell his daughter
“A woman doesn’t have what it takes to be President.
You don’t have what it takes”
I learn to breathe.
I cut through the smog of oppression,
Patriarchy, racism, hate-ism.
I break through the surface
And breathe
Breathe in the words of
Frida Kahlo, Selena, my mother,
Breathe in the actions of
Katherine Johnson and Rosa Parks,
And I hold these breathes,
While trying to learn to breathe my own words,
Breathe my own actions.
As a double minority (Mexicana and niña)
All you can hope to do is
Learn to Breathe in America