there is a girl inside

so for one of my classes we are reflecting on our adolescence.

i had a revelation this weekend that factors into this reflection process for me.

lucille clifton, my favorite poet, has a poem called "there is a girl inside"
this is it:

There is a girl inside.
She is randy as a wolf.
She will not walk away and leave these bones
to an old woman.

She is a green tree in a forest of kindling.
She is a green girl in a used poet.

She has waited patient as a nun
for the second coming,
when she can break through gray hairs
into blossom

and her lovers will harvest
honey and thyme
and the woods will be wild
with the damn wonder of it.

i got inspired by this in writing my reflection -- in my adolescence (and in some sense after as well), there was a girl inside. the girl i was at 2, and 6, and 9, wild and imaginative and smart and quoting anne of green gables and flying on spaceships got enclosed somewhere in the summer i turned 11. i shut her up except in safe places during high school, and every during college, because as soon as 6th grade came around there got to be consequences for letting her out. teasing, exclusion, funny looks. she's been creeping out, i think, inch by inch, as my world gets safer or i get braver.

i have always considered myself an introvert, but that was my weekend revelation, i don't think i am anymore. i think i was just inside.