- Mar 23
- 2 min read
Notes on Girlhood
My other ride is a pink cow Squishmallow.
My other body is a scar in a sequin prom dress.
This life, so far, has been both carnival and carnivore.
I learned to Fosse and faux pas in the same breath.
I learned to jazz-hands my way out of nightmare.
Now nothing can touch my girl blur.
Shirley Temple didn’t know her real age until she was thirteen.
Every year, they told her she was turning semicolon years old.
I relate to this, to having a wound for a birthday cake.
Every cake between spelling tests and pregnancy tests is a girl blur.
My other girl blur is a smear of red in a public bathroom.
It’s a face mask that’s just magazine pages and Juul spit.
It’s the undulating, guttural swing of a double u. Druul. Cuul. Fuul.
Nobody asked me to junior prom and that’s why I’m like this.
Weekends spent googlewhacking led me here.
Now every poem, like every girl, must quirk itself into one result.
I assign scientific names to energy drink brands, senses of dread.
Rubrum taurus. Homo diaboli. Glitter nihilism.
My usual—filet mignon with strawberry sprinkles.
Everything is better when it’s pink or dead or both.
Like sugar in a hot pan, I scorch and remain kind.
Wild how all that’s wild can be reduced.
I once was a person and now I’m a girl.
SHELBI CHURCH is an MFA candidate at the University of Alabama, where she is an assistant editor for Black Warrior Review. Her writing has been supported by Tin House and can be found or is forthcoming in AGNI, Tahoma Literary Review, Southeast Review, West Trade Review, The Journal, Yalobusha Review, and elsewhere. She lives and writes in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.