SORRY, SORRY, SORRY, SORRY, SORRY (SORRY)

When you teach a girl that all she is good for is pleasing and playing sweet and nice, she grows into a woman who has not spent one day as herself, which is to say I am whoever you want me to be, just don’t do it in a state of spite. I say sorry a lot, and so do the women around me and I have noticed that men and women do not speak the same language, their tongues do not seep the syrup of shame so steadily, or have ‘sorry’ iron-branded on their oesophagus. Their words do not slip through the clefts of the big man’s hands the way ours surge through, and if a voice is never heard, is it still a voice? When you teach a girl that all she is good for is pleasing and playing sweet and nice, she grows into a yes-singing siren, an antagonist’s apologist, a submissive shell of a soul. And is it too late to be something else? Anything else?