When I was younger, I had coal-black ringlets, an overactive imagination, and a mouth full of grinning pearls. I climbed into bed, excitedly pulling the covers over my legs, the stars winking at me from the window in my princess-pink room.
My mother sat on the edge of my bed. She had always been beautiful, sitting straight and proud, legs crossed like a lady, she was so graceful she walked like she was dancing. It was my mother who told me stories and taught me to read, my mother who painted out different worlds for me to touch, to taste in my dreams.
There was always one story I always remembered, though there was no corresponding book or illustration to remember it by.
"Upon generations and generations in your father's family," she began, voice calming and quiet. She had a voice like a running brook, though sometimes she could twist it up to be a hurricane or a rushing waterfall. "there were only boys."
"They were all strong, beautiful boys, but boys all the same. In that time, boys were precious, like gold or silver. They brought in wealth and prosperity, and girls were only meant to be hidden away, to bear children and not much else."
I had always frowned at that part, and braced myself for what my mother said next: "Sometimes, the little girls were discarded and thrown away. In a world where boys were gold and silver, girls were merely clay, and sometimes a burden."
"Where were they discarded?" I'd ask.
She smiled. "Up on the mountains or the hilltops. The angels would come downwards with their great, shimmering wings, and sweep up the little girls to place them back in heaven, where they belonged."
My father would come in, lean against the door. He was tall, with kind, patient eyes, and silver near his temples.
"Your father's family, however, never had that problem," she'd continue, making room for him on the bed. "Because they always had sons. In fact, no one could really remember a time when they didn't have sons."
"That's probably an exaggeration," my father would say, irrelevant, as usual. My mother and I glared at him.
Ignoring him, my mother would continue. "But your grandfather, your father's father, he was raised solely by his mother. She gave him her last name, and he carried it proudly, a kind of riches no one else could afford. Your grandfather understood the value of a woman." She would nod, in approval, maybe, and then my father would roll his eyes and smile.
"Your grandfather wanted nothing more than a daughter. He no longer wished to carry the age-old ancestry of sons, he wanted a daughter to raise to be strong and wild, to know her own worth. But he had three sons." She pinched my father's cheek affectionately. "It seemed like a curse he could not break."
Then she smiled. "And then there was me. I married your father, and I became pregnant with—" (she'd gasp for effect, then tickle me in the sides. I'd laugh.) "—you!"
She kissed my head. "You were such a beautiful baby. A beautiful, happy, wondrous little baby girl. You broke the curse."
Her eyes softened. "When your grandfather held you for the first time, he whispered, 'My daughter. My beautiful daughter.' and he blessed you with all the stars in the sky and the fish in the whole sea, because you are a girl, and you are the first."
No, I never forgot that story. I will not look down when speaking to a man, I will not hide myself in the kitchen and make tea with shaking, imprisoned hands, I will not allow myself to amount to nothing more than a giver of children, compliant and relenting. No, I am a Woman and I will not be silenced.
Let it be known that I am the first. It was I who ripped the sparkling gold threads of fate, it was I who shattered the stars just to forge my own destiny, it was I who broke the curse.
Because I am a girl. I am the first.
a/n: is this even poetry though
