Innocence.

They bought me pink diaries and toys,
and beamed at me as I sat down to play,
with their loud voices that seemed like noise,
'How innocent!' they'd look at me and say.
Amongst themselves, they'd talk of other things,
Of markets, motherhood, medicine and men,
they'd look round twirling their sparkling rings,
as I quietly scribbled their secrets with my pen.

I was child, I was invisible, unseen.
Underneath the plastic tiara I was hidden,
a perfect princess, not yet a broken queen,
Their world, to me, was as yet forbidden,
but innocence isn't a cork over the ear,
nor a hidden cog that impedes the brain,
their fears and longings, I could hear,
even as deafness, I was allowed to feign.

They said they longed to be as simple as me,
to smile at dolls and write little notes in ink,
but like them, I longed to be tall and free,
even in my little notes, that was all I could think.
Underneath the unicorn cover and glitter,
I wrote tales of cruel men and shameful want,
sometimes the young are already bitter,
desire and madness, very early, can haunt.

They decorated me in the naïvety of white,
but inside me ran a deeply scarlet river,
they projected onto me an ethereal light,
where there was only dirt and rotten liver.
They wanted me to seek pleasures so pure,
be an ingenue with a big heart and small fingers,
but I wanted to live behind a locked door,
and pretend onto my body the pain that lingers.

Innocence seemed like the lock on the window,
the one meant to keep me inside the cage,
to teach me all this womanliness was so low,
before I was taken by the pitfalls of age.
But I was never meant to play the games of children,
when the toy I wanted to break was always a heart,
to lock it all inside an iniquitous den,
and for once play the womanly part.

For innocence is a prison, it robs you of joys,
they taught me that when they bought me pink diaries and toys.