"Girlhood" by Khloe Kuckelman

Girlhood

Girlhood managed to evade me in my adolescent years, the little bitch,

but I finally caught her red-handed,

rifling through the free condoms and tampons

                        in the high school bathroom.

Paralyzed and deer-eyed against the seafoam green tiles,

she still manages to glow with pretty innocence,

as if she hasn’t neglected me since I was

torn from my mother’s womb.

I have lost more time to my incessant hunt for Girlhood

than I care to admit, and though I am a

bitter woman with very little redeeming qualities,

                        I believe I am owed compensation

for the memories of deprivation that should have been epics of connection.

For the missing tutus and my absent femininity—

I believe I am owed Girlhood, and now that I have captured her,

  she will not be pried from my bloody hands.

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Khloe Kuckelman (she/her) is a junior at Kansas State University where she is studying creative writing. She has been previously published in Touchstone Literary Magazine and won the 2022 Nonfiction Undergraduate Creative Writing Award. She has received 7 Scholastic Writing Awards for poetry and fiction, as well as the 2021 Cowley College Prodigy Award. When she is not studying or writing she enjoys watching movies, listening to music, and doing mediocre craft projects.