Girls are Ghosts by Alexa Meighen (North Carolina, 20)

Girls are ghosts
Dancing as the haunted woodland’s gracious hosts
Restrained to exist in the ebony abyss of a desolate midnight
Seeking adoration only from the eye in the sky’s scintillating light
​
Swirling shadows aflame reveal their gaunt silhouettes
Onlookers gaze in horror upon their blazing pirouettes
Dusting the air with an iridescent blanket of ashes
Little do they know that death didn’t deliver their final lashes

In life, they spent a menagerie on display
Untold stories, lives erased, and forced to hideaway
In death, they’re revered as demons to be exorcised
By the very same people who’d once had them baptized

The piercing prick of their persecution lingers on
A perennial wound where blood was forcibly drawn
Yet their coagulate catastrophe forever bleeds
Only to be undone by a world that finally meets their needs

Controlled, criticized, and cut down to make way for another
As were their mothers and their mother’s mother
A lineage of invisibility for the sake of man
Sacrificed on his alter of righteousness to prevail as better than

Their shrill voices sing a paralyzing song
Heading a warning to any that come along
“They’ll drive you mad and tell the story of how it was your fault”
Words stinging like the rawness of an open wound in salt

Underneath vines of waltzing wisteria they prance
Praying their daughters won’t become victims of the same circumstance
A sisterhood that’s fought for countless lifetimes
Vowing never to stop until they’ve rid the world of all its hateful crimes
​
If you listen closely, you can hear them call out from beyond the grave
An answer to one final question is all that they crave
“Now that you know our stories to be true,
If I cut out my heart, would that still not be enough for you?”





Alexa Meighen is a young artist born and raised in Concord, North Carolina. Growing up, she was always inexplicably drawn to the magic of storytelling in a variety of mediums such as writing, dancing, acting, and filmmaking. Despite her health issues, including a rare autoimmune disease called Relapsing Polychondritis, Meighen continues to devote herself to her artistic passions and creative endeavors in the hopes that she can encourage authenticity, imaginative thinking, and make powerful human connections.