Alternate Names for Pakistani Girls

Alternate Names for Pakistani Girls - Eshelle Azams (Beacons Newlands Islamabad, Eighth Grade)

1. The burn of girlhood 

Fraudulent men, excited to call me a woman before I am ready. 

My father holding my hand, crossing the streets tucked tightly into the sheets I call sleeves— aunties telling me the way I cross my legs makes me wrong— 

my mother holding me in the cusps of her hands, piecing together parts of my heart—I am not strong. 

2. Withholding happiness 

Happiness is for white boys, the ones who can spit cuss words through the teeth behind their lips, the ones whose eyes glow with the smirk that the world allows them. 

Happiness is for the girls who attend the senior prom—the ones who are unashamed of wearing white, 

it fits against their skin like a rose against vines, 

it is perfect. I am resentful of their audacity. 

3. Pretty like a promise 

The older classmen girls, the ones who withhold pretty like a promise, their skin pale like sweetened milk 

swear that one day—I will be pretty too. I had almost forgotten that I wasn't. They swear that they will decorate my face with powder that surrounds theirs like a magnet it draws, it attaches, it turns beauty into an art form I do not understand. Why can’t my hand be still like theirs? Why does it shake and twist and turn? 

4. Terrorist 

They see terrorist in my smile—not joy, not glee, 

they see assault when I playfully slap my friend’s wrist 

Sucker punch in my hips, 

ugly painted over my forehead. 

I am detained in a jail cell like the Pakistanis of Bagram, 

innocent and fleeting. 

5. A mother’s joy—and seized breath 

My mother wished on a million stars for me. 

It is hard to love a burning girl—and she realized it. She hates having to put out my fires. But I am her daughter, made with a lightness on my tongue and a flame in my belly, and she loves me even though I have caused her heart to seize its beats. 

If my mother loves me, I am happy. I do not need more than the pride beneath her frown.