The Girl

By Leena O'Connor

There once was a girl

Who was wild and free,

Perhaps even a little bit feral.

She understood the birds,

And could sing with the trees.

She danced with the moon,

And played in the stars.

Unbound by the limits of form,

She was nothing but joy and light.

She was sensitive and sweet

And could read everyone,

Knowing things she had no way of knowing.

It frightened the big people around her.

They didn't want to understand.

So they told her she didn't, she couldn't, she wouldn't.

You don't know a thing, you're a baby.

They told her instead what she needed to be.

To do.

To ACT.

How important it was to fit in.

She locked herself away to keep the peace

And stopped exploring the worlds in her sleep.

She pretended.

She began to believe it wasn't ok to be her.

And instead, she did the expected.

She was the good daughter, the good girl.

Doing what she had to survive.

To try to earn love and praise.

But it wasn't true.

It made her feel unsafe, and

As her belief grew that she was wrong and bad,

She tried to make herself invisible.

She masked.

She harmed.

Tried to destroy her true self.

And for a while she believed it would work.

But then she broke.

First she broke mentally.

Then she broke emotionally.

And finally someone helped break her physically.

She left her body when she split.

And started to look at the broken pieces,

Scattered all around.

She thought, she wished, she could die.

Instead, she chose to sort through the mess.

Pick up the truth,

And discard the rest.

As she looked at the pieces she decided to keep,

She saw glimmers of the girl from before.

And for her, decided to put herself together again,

To fill the cracks with the Gold of God.

To allow the sensitive and sweet girl to grow.

To reclaim her unfettered freedom

To dance and sing,

Express fully in Love,

To be the woman she once hoped she could be.

Intuitive and strong.

Powerful and kind.

Gentle and wise.

And now, As she looks at herself,

The perfect crooked tree.

I recognize that girl,

That woman is me.