loud girl isn’t allowed to be quiet
loud girl has to shout things in her loudest decibels
loud girl can’t be quiet
loud girl is expected to be noisy
loud girl shouldn’t be quiet
but loud girl is quiet.
loud girl is quiet when she comes home every day
because loud girl can’t be a loud girl
when her parent’s voices make enough noise
to shred the atoms in the air.
and loud girl is most quiet in the bathroom
with the steady drip drip of the broken faucet
and a razor cupped in her palm.
but loud girl isn’t allowed to be quiet
loud girl must be a loud girl
because she can’t be anything else
when people expect her to be just a loud girl
that is all she will become.