My father told me that I had a lot to lose,
when I hit puberty,
because I am a woman now and not a little girl anymore.
He told me not to have a boy as my best friend,
because you have that “thing” that bleeds
and there’s chances of manipulation,
what ifs and what ifs and what ifs, he offered me
and I gulped the chunks of his imagination.

When I turned fifteen, I had friends who’d ask
“Oh, can you check the back for me?
Are there any stains? Are you sure?”
Because the boys might see it,
and make fun of our bleeding uteruses.
When I was eighteen,
My father mocked my theory on feminism
and told me to scrub the teapot more,
nonchalantly while he placed his teacup
on the kitchen counter and my mother
shushed me, not to talk back,
as she said,
That is how she solves a problem.

Around twenty,
There’s tons of photos they gathered on the coffee table of our cream-walled living room, like a trophy,
for me, “Choose, my little girl, well not so little any more huh?”
When I said I wasn’t ready,
There’s a wish from my grandmother
“I want to see your children before I die, my love.
When will you ever be ready?”

Society hissed at me
when I walked down the road to my home,
“you got a great body but what’s the use of it?
Show us some skin,” and when you do, “What a slut!”
So I started writing.

I started writing because I know I’m going to be marrying someone
among those photos, they offered and
I know my grandmother will see my belly of fleshes and buckets of barf and
I know I’ll also scrub another teapot
accompanied by another tea cup on
another kitchen countertop and
I know I’ll bleed and bleed and bleed
until my ovaries are used up and their mouths are dry
because of their non-stop shaming of us,
So I said I’ll write.

I said I’ll write
Because I see rape jokes get written and
women getting petrified in an army of men,
I see drinks get spiked and
women sprinting when they see someone stalking them on their way back home.

So I write for my daughters
who will bleed tomorrow and tell them that their mother
never wanted to seize the world, but wanted to see it for once.
I write so they know when I tell them to be careful,
I’ll mind their feelings when telling their brothers to go out and play
and I’ll have a lot of guidelines and instructions ready for them
when they finally face the world.

Today, I turned thirty, a young mother.
I take my diary to hand it over.
It is ready and it’s called “love letters and suicide notes from a feminist.”