By Zara Quiter, TIWP Student

Boys liked P.E.,
and so we were supposed to hate it.
Boys religiously played video games,
and so we were supposed to get destroyed by them.
Boys messed around in class,
and so we were supposed to sit still and listen.
We learned.

I feel sorry for boys like that,
and in vain, I hope they feel just as sorry for girls like me.
They didn’t ask to be brought up in our world-
their world, I could say.
Their world that taught them only to run and run and run;
that’s why they like P.E.
Run during football until CTE overtakes their brain.
Run into cement walls as they’re drunk driving.
Run after us like we’re objects they were told were for their play.
Run away from emotions until they’re suppressed into rage.

The man that made boys like that was once a boy, 
just like that.
Before he had growth spurts and money,
he was no one,
with a squeaky voice and monster trucks.
That’s when he was handed sexism and superiority,
homophobia and bigotry.
And so he aged to be a little man with lots of power,
little on the inside and out.

Girls like me want to ignore boys like that.
We don’t want to hear them as they jeer,
as they kick soda cans filled with bright orange substance across the park.
Boys like that are sixth graders.
They are cussing each other out after school,
they are teasing the kid with the girlfriend because they want to be 
just 
like 
him.

We are currency to them.
Girls like me are the hundred thousand dollars bills they use to buy their vapes.
Melted into gold, we become a statue that can be prodded and poked,
vandalized and photographed.
These eleven-year-olds are the little men that haven’t grown up yet
to become the tall one with lots of power that he never knew he shouldn’t have.
Their verbal harassment will become physical abuse,
and the evidence will be burned with their expensive oil and egotistical liquor.
The spark emerges after we plead, 
someone. Help me.

I wanted to scream at the boys,
until they were silent
and scared and pissing the pants they felt oh-so-cool in.
Girls like me are better than boys like that,
because we know they are insignificant,
and so I didn’t bend down to their level for a meaningless screaming match.
I’ll do worse. They’ll see.
They equate to the scum clinging to the rubber on the bottom of my shoes,
that will get washed away into the sewers of Oakland,
as I stomp through the puddles that collect outside their very safe havens.
They are walking the Earth with half the heart I have.
In a few years, when they’re drinking around on these very streets,
to no consequence, 
money will wash away the alcohol from their blood before any test gets taken.

To these boys,
I pity you.
I shook my head as I lectured their insolent asses about the “gay jokes” they made to my sister.
I smiled a cruel, thankless smile as I shamed them for their immaturity.
I left them when I could of said so much more-
I showed them restraint,
but only to their face.
My wrath will take the form of a well constructed sword.
Sharp, and unyielding,
they are in for an unbeatable war.
Strength in spirit is at my side.

I am done with just letting go of boys like that.
If they see me as a doe, 
then it will be only more of a surprise when I show up as a lion.
Boys like that don’t realize a good deal about girls like me.
Maybe, if they stopped for a moment to think about the bullshit coming from their mouths,
they’d start to wonder just how easy it would be for me to drag them by the ear,
and up the front porch of their multi-million dollar house,
into an awkward conversation with their embarrassed mothers about their after school whereabouts.
Through their stupidity, they never could see that my words have weight.

I feel sorry for boys like that,
and in vain, I hope they feel just as sorry for girls like me.
But they don’t, 
and they won’t.
Boys like that need to start learning the lessons they missed from kindergarten,
because somehow, in their small little brains, 
someone encouraged them to install a belief that they were exempt from it.
So I will school them with the emotional maturity they would have maintained all their life,
that of a school boy.

Boys like that need to start listening to girls like me.
Because girls like me fill out detailed, well-punctuated reports to the district office.
If boys like that gifted themselves the kindness of awareness,
they’d know that older sisters are not ones to be messed with.
They know that the games I could play are not the ones they do,
on the football field.
Oh, you disillusioned, concussed nothings,
you should watch what you say before the storm of my unforgiveness reaches your shores.