We raise our daughters
Be strong, be bold, be beautiful
We brush their hair
Garden girls with meadow heads
Perfect wives, loving mothers
Not forces to be reckoned with
We raise our daughters
but encourage their heads to grow towards the ground
I refuse to fall
I refuse to be weighted,
anchored by the image you set out for me
Like clothes on a bed
Before I could even fit into them
We raise our daughters
but only to fit
As if love had a certain shape
A mold or it would break
Conditional and cracking
As a little girl
I played in the garden
My hair fell out of messy plaits
I felt pretty amongst the flowers
My sister and I
We became garden girls with meadow heads
Important and beautiful
And as we grew higher our hair grew lower
We gained shackles that grew to our sacrum
That wisped in the wind, floated and fell
Self-worth grew from my weighted scalp
Prickled at my neck while I slept
So I cut it
To you
It was a shame
We raise our daughters
And brush their hair
We tell them they’re beautiful when they
Abide by the standards set
We do not appreciate the rebellions
That set them apart
That make them beautiful
That sawed through the shackles
That pulled the prickled hair from our necks
That became a garden girl with freshly cut grass
So that I could bend to smell the lavender without
pushing my hair
From hiding my face
I can see
As I am free
Author: Menna Siwan
Email: [email protected]
Author Bio: I’m a twenty one year old art student trying to get through life, love and mental illness
Link to social media or website: http://mennasiwanart.com
