There are girls.
There’s their girlhood.
And then there are poems about girlhood.
Somehow, even after you’ve grown up and become women, these poems stay with you, just like the thought of girlhood does, like the nostalgia, like the memories, like the happy dreams and the summer days and the muddy playgrounds and the sleepless nights.
You can grow out of the girl you were, but I don’t think she ever grows out of you.
These poems about girlhood are almost therapy, reading someone else say something that you probably felt too but never put into words.
Somewhere on this page, I hope your find your childhood too.
Out of the ash, I rise with my red hair. And I eat men like air.
Sylvia Plath
And then there’s a poem that I wrote and submitted to a college magazine right before the deadline, so I was writing it the night before and it was a women’s magazine so this was the theme.
Poems about Girlhood
Title: Let Me Live an Ambitious Dream
Girls! A teenage girl’s body is a cage
Held strong together by things that are expected of her
Things she has to take care of; periods, boys, modesty,
While the child in her wants to come out and play in the mud.
But this is not about toxic feminism
This is not to hate men
Not to condemn all the people out there
This is not even about them.
A woman’s body is a temple and her cage is a bit bigger
It resembles a house and a naked child.
And her prison mates never bother asking
When was the last time you ever smiled?
“The birth of that child, made me the happiest person alive”
She answers with a smile
And see, there it is, that heavenly happiness
even if she’s tired and it’s been a while.
But why are you always pointing out this fact
I haven’t got a Y chromosome and those who do try to pull me down.
Is it an anomaly being a girl?
Why does my cherished body make you frown?
Just let me exist without worrying about him
Let me live my ambitious dream without a tremor.
Let me make something of myself and be unapologetic
In telling my own story and letting it breathe forever.-a poem on girlhood
Now that we’ve brushed the amateurish out of the way (yeah, I’m talking about me), it’s time to look at a poem from the actual master of the craft—
Over the fence—
Strawberries— grow—
Over the fence—I could climb— if I tried, I know—
Berries are nice!
But— if I stained my Apron—
God would certainly scold!
Oh, dear, — I guess if He were a Boy—
He’d— climb— if He could!-Emily Dickinson
And then this one—if you’ve ever had this thought about being different than other girls, you’d relate (and it’d be okay).
You are not like other girls. You are not like other girls (“You are not like other girls,” the boys you run with will tell you, and you will try not to let them see you preen under the glancing light of their approval). You learn their books and their language. You laugh at their jokes. You listen to their stories, sit blank-eyed on their couched while they play video games, pass them your English notes. You keep their secrets. You use the words they use about other girls in order to assure yourself that they will never use those words about you. You make yourself into nothingness, a ghost conjured into being only through the desires of boys, the rules of boys, the ideas of boys. You’re not like other girls.
-Sarah McCarry, ‘Here We Are’
Much like Sylvia’s Plath’s famous line in The Bell Jar, as Esther tries to reassure herself of her place in the world – ‘I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am’ – the fervour with which we create content, capture ourselves, our rooms, our outfits, our possessions, and the ardour with which we turn ourselves inside out in the digital realm feels like a repeated reassurance: I was here, I was here, I was here.
-Ellen Atlanta, ‘Pixel Flesh: How Toxic Beauty Culture Harms Women’
Sometimes when people look at me with pity I want to shout, I was a teenager girl once! so they know I can survive anything.
-Lucie Britsch, ‘Sad Janet’
Monsterhood is a girl’s body you don’t belong in.
-Trang Thanh Tran, They Bloom at Night
Peach pits are poisonous. This is not a mistake. Girlhood is growing fruit around cyanide. It will never be your for swallowing.
-Brenna Twohy, Swallowtail
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