It is easy to hide in a trap. Walls built of mortar we stole and consonants I spit out angry. No doors between words. Windows stained by the hesitation to leave. We lie on rotting carpet we should have stripped years ago, and cough. Mold is easy to breathe in when you speak English. Nostrils cleared by nasal vowels. It is easy to forget who you are going to be when your language has no future tense. It is easy to hate being girl when girl’s language has no gender. All we have are harsh nouns. “Woman” haunts you, approaches in small steps, encroaches as stiff as our stomachs staring down the ceiling. Before we can cough again, time offers an ultimatum. Chandeliers witch-laugh in every room. When they fall, we won’t have to do this anymore. No more girl. Absorbed by light. That is all you and I have ever wanted, right? Here is my whisper to you: we are wrong. Wrong about something being wrong with girl. Our language has taught us to sew blame onto ourselves to cover our skin. At the very least, you must let the light back in. I’ll tell you the only way out. Loving being girl begins at Abuela’s coffee table. In your family’s gendered language. En otra trampa. In another trap. Find solace in how every adjective calls you its sister. In how all your words share space with you, change how they end for you, bow to you like waxed windows letting light in. It is easier to love being girl with constant confirmation. It is easier to love being girl when you are the language, when you own the trap between your teeth, when you are alive to do so much more than breathe in mold. Girl has been girl as long as girl could speak. We forget this in English. We forget there is something stunning about being permanent, unerasable. Girl, leave. It is easier to love yourself with reminders. Let the vowels remind you. Let yourself lock the door behind you.
plan de fuga / escape plan
Lucy De Maio lives, writes, and takes the train in Chicago. She was named an All-Star Poet at the Rooted and Radical Youth Poetry Festival in 2024 and a recipient of the Randall Albers Young Writers Awards held by the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame in 2025. She is a current member of Collaboraction Theatre’s Light Ensemble, where she has performed original spoken word at events like Kidzapalooza, the Utopian Ball, and the Light It Up series.