MORE GIRLS LIKE YOU
“God made girls like you make guys like me / Wanna reach for the brightest star, set it on a ring / Put it on your hand, grab a piece of land / And raise a few / More girls like you.“*
We were born to circle the fire.
We’d been brought there by our mothers,
told to listen for the wind to turn.
It was their song we heard,
a whistle in our bones.
*
We were not wearing orange,
but our mothers could see us.
They knew hunting season
was a tradition we survived.
*
No diamonds.
No gold rings.
No veils to lift.
*
Only the sparkle of hoarfrost,
or the highway catching low sun
in those cold months,
when The Men came.
*
The Men
with guns zipped in cases,
blood on the soles of their boots.
The Men,
and their promise.
*
Someday,
we would make good wives.
*
But we were already good
long before the grabbing.
Before they claimed this piece
of land as theirs,
we were part of a circle.
*
We belonged to no one.
We were from somewhere they could not build.
We had no names they could take,
so they called us Girls.
*
And our love was not sweet.
It was thick like mud
with the promise of new life,
and danger.
*
When they tried to hold us,
our blood flowed fast beneath our skin
the way our river does each spring,
too much for the path already cut.
*
They thought because we were Girls,
we’d be swept away in the rising,
but we don’t abide by their logic.
*
We are the flood.
*
When they said we were sweet,
we knew they’d never tasted bitter tongue.
Nothing is sweeter than honey,
but we learned to swallow that lie
like a shot that burns going down.
*
Like the blackberry brandy they gave us
when we were barely old enough to bleed.
*
They couldn’t see us,
that’s how we got so close.
*
While they slept off their whiskey,
we gathered deep in plum thickets,
learning their tools.
Teaching ourselves to swarm.
*
When the wind finally turned,
it carried a scent we knew was death —
the death The Men brought with them.
*
We only did what had to be done.
*
We wore fur,
pretended to be game.
*
Roamed the back forty in herds,
filled their cups and smiled.
*
And The Men
gave us money and compliments,
and as night grew dark,
put their hands on our bodies.
*
When they squeezed our flesh tight in their palms,
they whispered,
I bet you are wild like your mother.
*
At those words,
our hearts nearly burst.
*
This was our truth,
made plain,
though it gave us no joy at all
to hear them say it,
nor to feed them to that fire.
*
We hadn’t started this tradition,
but now that it was late,
the flame was ours.
*
When we were finished,
we let that fire die too,
covered the field with ashes.
*
Now, in spite of all that was,
our summers are scented by wildflower,
and sweet again.
*
Their bones we buried,
all except for the hands.
We kept those,
placed them on a string.
*
We made necklaces,
which became heirlooms.
*
These we saved for our daughters,
so they would never forget:
Near the source of our pain,
is the first note of our song.
*Lyric from Kip Moore, More Girls Like You. One in an ongoing series of pieces written after listening to, and reimagining, Top 40 Country Songs.
