They said she was ready, because her body had begun to bloom,
but nobody asked if her heart had learned how to dream.
Nobody asked if she still wanted to play in the rain,
if she still feared the dark, if she even knew what love meant beyond her mother’s arms.
They wrapped her in lace and silence,
called it tradition, called it duty, called it culture,
but all she felt was the weight of a stolen childhood.
Her dolls watched from a corner,their plastic eyes wide with confusion,
as she became a bride before she became a woman.
And later, when the world closed in with cold hands of assault, they told her to hush, to forget, to forgive.
But how do you forgive a wound that keeps learning your name?
She walks now with broken lullabies in her chest, and people say, “Be strong.”
But strength was never the question, freedom was.
The right to say no without fear, the right to be a child without shame,
the right to heal without hiding her scars.
Let her run barefoot again, let her laugh without being told it’s too loud.
Let her write her story in her own handwriting, not in the ink of survival, but in the color of hope.
Because every girl deserves a tomorrow without tears, a body that belongs only to her,
a voice that says: LET HER BE A GIRL.
AUTHOR BIO
Gift Aaron is a focused and resilient 300-level Mining Engineering student at the Federal University of Technology Akure in Ondo State. She combines academic dedication with a passion for writing and women’s empowerment, continually building her confidence, skills, and impact within the creative community.
