~Pink Ribbons Fell To The Ground While I Was Running~

I feel: like nothing is real
























When I close my eyes
I see a girl
in a frilly dress
with pink patent-leather shoes.
Red hair and running heedless of the frills
ribbons undone and threatening to fly away.
I see a girl whose smile is too big for her face.
I'm supposed to "tone it down" they (the grown-ups)say.
I see a girl standing on the front porch of my mother's house reciting Edgar Allan Poe
pretending to be on a Shakespearean stage.
The thing is, when I close my eyes my frills keep getting ripped and my ribbons dirtied.
I run and I run and I run in my pink patent-leathers. Always into some grown-up who says how pretty I am.
It's a dangerous thing to be too pretty.
It makes the grown-ups jealous of you.
It makes them want to rip your insides out over and over again
until you have no more prettiness inside
until you are nothing,
which is just what they wanted all along.
Can't be too pretty.
Can't be too happy.
Can't be untouched.
Tongues are double-edged swords and cut deep into the tender flesh of a young girl's heart.
Hands are worse. Big hands and nowhere to run. No one to help.
No one cares that you're scared.
No one cares that you're hurt.
Grown-ups can be selectively deaf. They only hear what they want to hear and believe what they want to believe.
A grown-up mind is a strange thing. It bends words and twists things around so a little girl would think what they did to her was her fault.
I hope I never become a grown-up.
I still have my ribbons and my pink patent-leather shoes with the pretty bows on top.
I still have my frilly dresses.
Only now, I'm scared to be pretty.
There's still all those grown-ups around.
I don't trust them.