Sit Pretty By Dia Davina Poem by Sharron Meaker

it's a girl isn't she pretty sugar and spice
fit pretty
stay pretty
Smile pretty
baby girl like gowns and bonnets
mint flowers in her bones so she'll grow
up to be a garden ripe for the picking
grow up to be a sound grow up to be a mother
mother teach me wrong
teach me right
teach me to say yes to life
teach me yes but judge me no to
A mother teach me no
did you know mother what it's a girl
would do to be that it would teach me to
sit it pretty
stay pretty
smile pretty
gentle girl be gentle
always gentle
so I was gentle sap
stay well he touched me
no one thought it's a girl to say huh
it's a girl a girl for the touching for
the taking no mistaking what this means
what this means is good luck bro you're
on your own mother did you know that it
would mean that my cousin could fool me
into taking a walk with him that would
change the way I like my lover's touch
me to this day did you know that when I
told you years later what happened you
would react with exactly the amount of
concern that the rest of the world does
many of it it's a fact
seventeen percent of girls under the age
of sixteen have been victims of sexual
violence committed by a family members
of fact is it's a girl mother did you
know that it would mean that I would
grow up to hate this body so much that I
would work today
make it disappear that small girl gets
smaller always smaller you can't break
something that's barely there but hate
has no minimum size and I made it the
girl fit into every piece of me looking
in the mirror fingers down
throat choking on the it's a girl they
shop so deep it creep out of me even now
employees love me comes wailing from my
chest down so tightly against it to her
it's a girl is a contract you're never
asked to sign not everyone makes it out
alive but here with so much ugly in my
hate I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
sweet songs have been blades of grass
driven war cries at the moon with the
tune of the last time my heartbeat
innocence
instead of fists if it's a girl