We were

smelly, snaggletoothed, possessive of what we would lose anyway, big footed, shiny pantsed, too loud, too quiet, boring, exasperating, bored. We sulked. We snitted. Summer days, we sat and the flesh of our thighs spread like pancake batter. We broke into hives that looked like small bee stings or like nothing at all. We were better as an idea than we turned out to be in real life. Nice until you got to know us. Moody. Thick before a storm. Unmuscular and determined. Clenched. Frizzy. Unsmiling. Given to questions. Given to not trying hard enough. We didn’t care what the boys thought. We could tell you all their first and last names. We were skinny legged and sensitive as spiders. We were waiting to find out who would never be old enough to vote. Hiding out rather than making club houses. Our faces were wrong today and more wrong tomorrow. You would catch us staring. We dove and our feet kicked up.

Started from a line by Sun Yung Shin, from Heart Eater: A Memoir of Immigration, Belonging, and How We Find Ourselves in Language: “We were told growing up that we were . . .”