Bitter Tastes and Bad Brains

The girls pop their pills at exactly 7.25am,
still groggy, stolen from dreams.
Their frosted flakes are replaced with tiny, sugar-coated tastes of freedom.
But the aftertaste is anything but sweet.

The girls flirt and fight and fly and feel, frankly — frazzled.
They flit between blank, numb days
and energetic outbursts.
As they are drip fed the chemicals, the necessary recipe.
And they are grateful.
They have to be.

Some of the girls offer up their arms,
which they have scrubbed and soaked and grown
from scratch.
To be sliced and implanted,
seduced with the promise that
this is a very grown up decision to be making.
But it is the kind of promise that feels like a punishment.
Like they should learn that to become a woman is to become familiar with pain.

That independence comes with a price.

The girls are snatched before they are fully grown,
before they know who they are.
To be called mad by boys who don’t understand
what it is to live in fear of their own fertility.

The girls become side effects.
They become shrugging, forgiving beings.
Who take what they can get.
They deserve better, sweeter.
We can do better than this.