Tag: social media

Posted in Blog, Creative Writing, Writing

The Tumblr DMs of Teenage Girls

Posted on by MissJSquared

There are wolves on webpages,
whispering sour somethings to silent, shocked ears,
girls, not yet done growing,
growled at by grown men,
good, feminist, sex positive guys who just want to show them how much fun it is to be a woman.

“This is weird, but… Is it okay if I jerk off to your selfies lol. You’re so cute!”

The text cursor blinks in disbelief,
but she just stares, blankly.
This is her third howl from a wolf in the last hour.
Her age is written in the One Direction gif spam and the Glee branded tank top that took up most of the selfie he salivates over,
and it’s spelled out,
once for each of her fifteen years, in posts and profile details,
but the wolf is playing dumb.

“You don’t look fifteen. You’re so grown up for your age…”

She looks fifteen. Maybe even fourteen.

The text cursor is once again dumbfounded,
but the child is wise beyond her years.
It is her survival skill.
Alas,
there is no hunter roaming the woods to rid her of the wolf,
no axe available to her hands,
just whisper networks, where children warn each other and wait for the adults to do something about the other adults.

“Random, but I was thinking about you, and I took this picture… You see what you did to me?”

Nobody comes (except the wolves, of course),
and the child adds another whisper to the wind,
growing up, mired in mistrust,
called a prude for being rude to the man who meant her harm.
Nothing changes,
nobody arrives to save the silent, scared child,
but everyone is shocked when she is reborn at eighteen,
axe in hand,
the hunter she hungered for.

Posted in Blog, Creative Writing, Writing

Dear Annalynne McCord – If I Was Your Mother

Posted on by MissJSquared

Dear Annalynne McCord,
I’m sorry that I was not your mother.
If I was your mother,
you would have been loved enough to know that a war is not the right time to center yourself.
Held in the kind of esteem that makes you secure enough in yourself to offer real help, instead of attention seeking stunts with an unhealthy dose of internalised misogyny,
and if not, I would have simply switched the wifi off when you said “Mum, I’ve written Vlad a poem.”

If I was your mother,
the world would have gone on as it did,
but your publicist wouldn’t have the headache of you being heartbreakingly empty headed as the bombs rain down and the dreams of children burn.
I cannot imagine the stain, the soul stealing pain of being so blind to the world around you,
and so convinced of your own good virtue that you think a dictator’s madness could have been stopped by the mythical magic of a mother’s love.
The boy became a man, and then became much older, but the world still holds his mother responsible,
holding her over the fire, when by his own admission, she was a better mother than you had been wishing to be,
and still you blame her, instead of him.

If I was your mother, I would tell you what motherhood really is.
It is not a recipe, nor a formula,
there is no true guidebook or manual,
it is just giving and giving and hoping and wishing that the child you gave your heart to will grow up and be a blessing,
but a child is not a dish that you cook,
or a drink that you mix,
or a problem you can fix,
A child is the wayward winds of the Western Isles,
A child is the April showers on the coast of Hastings,
A child is the sweet sunsets watched by tired shepherds…

If you haven’t guessed by now, my dear AnnaLynne, I am trying to make clear that a child is a thing we love but not control,
a child is a storm, a summer breeze, things we wait for, things we watch, but things that will grow, love, hate, decide, laugh, run, cry and wage war, all on their own, eventually.

If I was your mother, you would understand,
we can teach them to be polite,
use the right forks at dinner,
appreciate music and green vegetables,
we can tell them to be kind,
hold them tight,
read them stories,
but time passes,
and our influence fades and they escape from our arms into the world and…

They wage wars,
or they make stupid slam poetry videos on social media,
and if I was your mother,
I would ask you who made the decision to record that nonsense?
Who said those words?
Who simpered on camera for the “lost soul” of a dictator?
Was it you?

If I was your mother,
I would ask you what you expect the corpse of Vladimir Putin’s mother to do.
I would ask you why years after her death,
years after the childhood he says himself was good,
you still throw the blame for a grown man’s crimes at a dead woman’s shoes?
If I was your mother,
I would ask why you look at a grown man and can’t understand that his soul was lost because he threw it away.
If I was your mother,
I would switch off the wifi, and tell you to get some damn perspective.
If I was your mother,
I would take you to a writing class.

Posted in Blog, Creative Writing, Writing

I Was Checking Your Instagram Because I Thought I Was Too Harsh and I Wanted To See If You Were Okay, But It Turns Out, I Wasn’t Harsh Enough :)

Posted on by MissJSquared

My shoes are my own,
cheap, unchallenging,
made for me to meander and muse,
while I sing the blues and cry with the eyes of a criminal.
Someone told me once that I couldn’t be captured,
and it consumed me,
because it felt like a fated prophecy,
some kind of inexplicable, inescapable destiny,
and the lines on my hand all seemed to lead that way,
so I began flying at night,
to keep my feet on the ground.

I have suffered for every syllable and stanza.
I don’t expect you to accept that,
because you’ve invented a perception of me in your head,
once one that you adored and now one that you despise,
and while I’m not interested in trying on either costume,
I just thought you should know that my shoes are my own,
and the words are weaved within me,
tangled in the trending scale of my moods,
but always grown in the way I could never convince a child to do.

If a heart was found bleeding,
then I don’t know why anyone would look at me.
My hands are, as always, immaculately clean,
never holding a knife to the soft skin of hope,
never bruising anything but an ego,
that was forthcoming with false apologies that faded in the scrutiny of sunlight.
You broke your own heart, babe.
You stood above your own bed,
broke inside your own chest and crushed your heart until it stopped beating.
I just sat at your bedside, aghast,
asking why you’d do something so self sabotaging.

It might have been “worth it”,
if I’d got any good work out of it,
worth it to feel degraded and like I’d fallen back to a place I couldn’t escape,
and even now,
you act like you couldn’t understand my apprehension,
while repeating a bullshit mantra of “I hear you. I feel you. I see you.”

You see what you want to see,
you hear the “No” and ask again anyway,
you feel aggrieved,
telling your few followers all about “me”,
but you don’t mention the pressure,
the guilt trips,
the gaslighting,
the drip, drip, drip assault of my boundaries,
because you only hear me,
when I am reading your script.

If you feel “amateur”, take a writing class.

It would definitely help.