Little girl, Poetry by Tessarra Parrish

Genres: Dark, painful, love, fear, inspired, hardships, hope, memories, fear, honesty.

Little girl
by Tessarra Parrish

Dear you,
Scared little girl I was once you.
Picking excuses out of a garden full of unwanted answers and confusion.
There’s no rain to keep this garden you’ve created alive forever and your personal creators drown your acceptance in poison like dead weeds growing.
Little girl, I see through your blank stare when your mother asks you if anyone at school catches your eye and you know what she means so you change her name to “him” and when she asks what he’s like, you want to mention that she loves all the same songs that you love and she speaks as sweet as April because that’s when she was born. You want to tell your mom how warm you feel in her company, but you really want to tell her she’s the most beautiful form of life my eyes, this world, this universe, has ever come across.
But instead you tell her he’s great.
Little girl, I know your dad spits homophobia off his tongue like a wildfire burning and when he found your love letter with her name signed across it he cried and you cried and he told you he didn’t love you anymore, that God couldn’t love you anymore.
But you don’t understand why you feel more comfortable showering in the light shinning through the stain glass window in gods house than you feel singing next to your parents on Sunday mornings.
So you lay in your garden remembering all the times your parents told you God loves you unconditionally, wondering why that no longer applies.
Little girl, i know you cry yourself to sleep at night because you never had the choice people say you have.
They will ask you questions like, “What happened to you that made you like girls?”
“Why don’t like boys?”
“Have you ever liked boys?”
They will tell you maybe you need to give a boy a chance.
They will dig a hole in your garden to search for any justification as to why you are not like them.
They will label you as a sinner because your sin is the only sin they are not committing.
Little girl, your parents will find every reason to make you hate everything you love inside of her, so you ask your dad why he fell in love with your mom. He talks about her smile and how it’s brighter than the sun, her laugh how it sounds like lullaby, her heart how it’s larger than the ocean but not once did he mention anything that had to do with her sexuality.
You don’t understand why his love for your mom is authentic and yours isn’t.
Little girl, I know you would rather leap out in front of a bus than to ever face the violent stares you will receive by holding her hand in public but I promise you she will plant daisy’s and rose bushes in the heart of your garden.
She will go outside to water until the dirt turns green,
And when she’s done she will place a seed inside the palm of your hand so that now she may grow inside of you too.
Scared little girl I was once you, but take this gift and tell her you love her, tell her you love her 7 times, 10 times 11 times, 22 times.
Tell your mom that boy is a girl and you love her,
Tell your dad you love God and you love her too,
Tell your friends who asked you questions that none of it matters cause you love her,
Tell yourself it’s okay to love her.
Tell her, little girl.

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