I was nine years old when once the light bulb in our kitchen went out

My father, holding his tool box asked me to come with him and handed me a flash light

Being the tom boy that I was, my gaiety was above the clouds

Knowing that I was asked to assist on a manly task instead of my brother made me awfully proud!

I held the flash light with a  barely controlled glee while my father fixed the bulb

Looking back it seems like another era when the word 'limits' was unknown to me, when I was still ready to take over the world!

A lot has happened since then...

I've learned to be a girl, to know my limits, to lower my voice, to scribble my feelings only with a pen!

I was eleven years old when my parents told me that I couldn't ride my bicycle outside anymore

The reason was too vague for my stubborn mind to understand and it still haunts me to my core

For they let me sit unhesitently on the back seat of my brother's bike

Because even at that tender age his privilege could protect mine!

I was thirteen and immature still, when I saw my girlfriends' changed behaviors

They were told that their protruding chests were too fragile for them to maintain their old composures!

So unknowingly or subconsciously, we altered the way we used to hug

Only with one arm around the other, careful not to tug

What we were told to be shameful of!

I was  fifteen when I finally started to show some signs of being a girl

That's when I learned about another privilege I was robbed of!

My mother did our laundry once a week to wash everyone's clothes

And me being a girl would gladly help her finish her chores

That's when I found another huge difference between a boy and a girl, in the land where I belonged,

I was to put my underwears away under the shade far from everyone's sight

While my brother's boxers were clipped to the front line on display!

I still don't understand the reason my mother finds sense in this senseless act

But she was once a girl too so maybe it was something passed down to her as a matter of fact!

I was sixteen when I asked my father to take me to the cinema

A Madagascar sequel had just come out and me being a nerd wanted to watch that!

But dad told me that cinemas are not a good place for honorable little ladies

And that he wouldn't risk his daughter's safety by taking me to a place almost like the underworld of Hades!

But I still wonder how he could live with himself and his paradoxical opposing ideas,

Because only a few days later he high-fived my brother for starting to be independent, relishing his manhood and going to the movies with his friends.

My life is filled with events and instances when my brothers were preferred over me just because I had a body everyone named 'fragile'

But I wonder if they know that I am just like the one who brought them to life, enduring a struggle too hard for even them to tackle!

I am a girl encouraged to become a strong woman by the same men who cut my wings before telling me to take flight

I am tired of men looking at me like basset hounds to stags because their masculinity just wants a bite of me, the first girl in their sight!

Because afterall I am forbidden fruit right?

And the forbidden fruit is always the sweetest!

My breasts are compared by beasts to lemons and melons

My vagina symbolized by a flower

I am mature enough to understand this trap now,

Because flowers are bound to wilt and fruits made to devour!

So hear me now as I break my limits and turn my whimper into a bang

I am not weak as glass, I am diamond and I'll cut up your whole gang!

I don't need the help of those with hypocritical misogynistic ideas and thoughts

I am enough to take care of this temple of a body that was brought

By the God to your door!

Every month I feel my body making and unmaking itself

How it coils around itself until it breaks and just lets go, shattering everything in its way!

How holy it is the way my body is better than every inspirational quotation in the world as it reminds me that it's okay to break and fall as long as I get back up again, to collect all the shattered pieces and make a better version of myself!

And I'm told that no blood is flown without violence

So I guess even nature made it ironical that every day somewhere some woman bleeds down her legs,

Screaming silently to the world, admitting fiercely, that being a woman is no less that being in a war!!