Writer’s Spotlight: Kendall Cruise

Kendall is a junior English (Creative Writing) & Adolescence Education major. She has previously been published in Gandy Dancer & Iris Magazine. When actually writing and not thinking about writing and deciding to play The Sims instead, they pull from the complications of gender identity, ways in which we are socialized as children, the ‘future self,’ and questions surrounding belief.

Every Shade Is Pink

B is for boy

& boy is for blue.

The once yellow walls now

covered

in boy, which is to wonder

if it had ever been

mine in the first place.

“Your” room turns “you

& your sister’s” room.

Our new room is a light shade

of blue,

questions whether it is really

ours at all.

Boy can also be for green or

red or

orange or

black. There are dents

in, what is now,

my brother’s room from

his yellow truck.

There are scribbles on the door

in every color imaginable.

In more color than I have

ever seen.

My brother never plays baby

dolls;

never taught how not to break;

how to not set the world on fire;

a fire with bright reds,

a fire that doesn’t

have to be blue.

Never knew that all this was

once mine too.

G is for girl, but

girl is not for green or

red or

orange or

black.

The blue of our

wall painted magenta,

as if that is the only way

it can belong to us.

Hot pink bedding

& a pastel dollhouse,

so when you look at the lot of

us you know

what this means; it means girl.

Girl is for pink,

girl is for purple.

Which is to say girl

is not for sun—

set or sunrise or

grass or ocean.

Girl is for princess,

girl is for cage.

Girl is not

& will never be:

the dragon,

the knight.

The girl is

a carnation, a cherry

blossomed, lavender.

Girl is not

for land or forest or any other

part of this earth that she can-

not own.

She sprouts, is plucked

from the ground; she is kept

alive, but just barely;

she is given away in the name

of love.

Something that this earth does

not belong to just a very long-

winded way of saying: girl.