"Dead Girls"

November 20, 2018; Protest Poetry

I was barely eight years old, but
two older boys thought:
“It’d be so much fun to flash her”.
It wasn’t much longer, then,
Before I was being catcalled, groped,
Sent nude images as if they meant “hello”.
Men with children as old as me,
Wanting to have children with me.
And, don’t you dare say “no”,
Because that means you’re “pathetic”,
A “slut”, that “should go back to the kitchen”
That doesn’t deserve the attention,
That I didn’t want in the first place.
But, a 17-year-old girl just killed herself
Because her underwear was her consent.
And one in four little girls, just like me,
will be sexually abused.
The world is killing its girls,
Yet blaming those girls for dying.