Poetry

unamid photo

By

Okeke Precious Ozioma

Because I Am A Girl

My father’s voice

Was the danger signal

Reminding me of how female I am

Singing it like a song

He always remind mother

Of how worthless she is

For giving him not a child

Maybe father was right

When he called me a talking fly

So I grew up with this mentality

That I am not child enough

I am not what the world needs

Cos father said so

I grew up hating the girl in me

Avoiding eye contact with my shadow

I try escaping from my reflection

I curse my shadow in my dialect

Scold my feminine body in English

Covering myself with the hood

Scared of facing womanhood

I ask myself weird questions

Dear me,

Why must you be born a girl?

I feed on self hatred and depression

Making myself  a cage

I locked myself in myself

Staying too long in this cage

The desire to be free crackled to life again

So I walked into the world to say

Dear world,

It’s hard to be in you and not be loved

Maybe I should tell father

That I am he wrapped in a different body

That I am the beautiful letter he marked as spam

Maybe I should tell the world that

I deserve a portion of its love

Okeke Precious Ozioma

Okeke Precious Ozioma is from Anambra State, Nigeria, and is a 200level Student of Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka.