and a string of lights,old photographs,post cards from New York.
She embellished her walls with all she could,because she was not allowed to paint them the colour of her choice when she had been 8.
She more than made up for it.
Decorated her walls inside a shoebox,a cage,
a construct that wasn't her own creation,
a cage where she was told who she was,
who she should want to be,the choices to make,
which dreams to dream,
Where she got told,her whole life.Got told
she had to study harder because she was a girl,speak softer,
give up on visible signs of angst,try harder.Where her value was
based solely on the length at which the hem lines of her clothes ended
and whether her hair was cut in a particularly modest fashion,
and the number of piercings on her ears.
Told she would never be good enough, just by virtue of being female.
Her walls never told her if she was good,
or good enough,They never told her good girls don't question and
good girls don't go on treks,and good girls don't stand up for themselves,raise their voice
against violence or dare to leave,walk away,walk out.
What they told her instead,was that good girls don't exist,
that the very phenomenon was as phony as the ideals
that a patriarchal society raises its boys to expect out of women with.
Only reminded her she shouldn't have to fight
for things she ought to have been born into.
They never told her she couldn't dream in colours
other than pink.Never told her she couldn't be queen
or conquer the world.Never told her she couldn't
hand pick stars out of a galaxy and
weave them into a wreath to wear as a flower crown
in her hair, rule over the cosmos.Never told her she couldn't
grow a garden of daises instead of roses in her lungs,
choose to create the fragrance that her evenings breathed in.
Walls only reminded her she was bigger and better
than the rusted iron shackles of the cage,
and that she need not to have to be more to matter.
She did not need the validation to be her own person.
So,she decorated her walls with everything she was told
she couldn't be but wanted,and wished for.
To be free as a bird,and enlightened in this darkness
with no name and harbour dreams foreign to
those who expected their washed out ambitions to take
shape into her would-be aspirations.
The cage was meant to crush and quell her,a pure construct of obscure condition.
force her to curl back into the regressive position of
a murdered foetus and shrink into a thin
film like the body of a dead fish
floating upside down in a tank,
with their weapon of retrogression.
But she built her walls so strong,
they began to crack through the ribs,
of the cage,like a massacre in cold blood.
The only thing they did not forbid her from was building walls,and she did.
That girl was me.
