The Journey Ships Take by Annabel

The Journey Ships Take by Annabel - April 2023 Scholarship Essay

When I was twelve years old, I found a video of a spoken word poem, called How Teenage Girls are Like Poetry by Sophie Priceman. Though it spoke to me about womanhood, I thought the adversity the poet faced wouldn’t pertain to me. It was hard to read between the lines of history to discover what it would really be like.

Ships
Becoming a woman has the feeling of a sinking ship.
Both picked apart in mind: pronouns and perceptions.
Flesh reassembled into wood,
hung on oak like ornaments.

Then, I turned thirteen. I began to experience life like a new vessel out to sea, used for many things: entertainment, joyrides, and appearances. An old man wouldn’t stop staring at my chest through my tight t-shirt at the pizza parlor. I decided to watch the poem again thinking maybe I could relate to more of it than I had a year ago. I turned fourteen, and an older boy pulled me on top of him, pressed himself against me, and pressured me into getting into bed with him. I rewatched the poem. I turned fifteen and a man followed me out of the library down the street, shouting at me. I rewatched the poem. I turned sixteen and old strange men grabbed my waist and called me pretty, on two different occasions. I rewatched the poem. Now, I’m seventeen and a few months ago, a student masturbated to my high school dance performance in the middle of a full audience. I rewatched the poem as I relived the poet's story.

A pale belly swells with breath and sail,
creaking helms fill with water.
wood rots and aches and cracks apart
until the ocean swallows like a creature
devouring salt water, stomach acids
digesting deep in its belly.

Sophie Priceman was seventeen, like me. She said she hoped eighteen and nineteen would be odes and not elegies. I don’t hope. I make change. No matter what, something is going to happen. These people I discuss haven’t faced consequences for things they did. Whether I was too scared to speak, or no one helped me when I asked: not the school, not my parents, not my guidance counselor. Reflecting on my own experience has been heartbreaking, but watching my peers have similar experiences shatters me. So instead of hoping for change, I make change. Those shards of heartbreak fuel the fire of my passion to fight for people like me. I want to further my research in women and gender studies because I want to make the world a better place for women. BIPOC, LGBTQ+, pregnant, disabled, elderly, first generation, ALL women. It is my passion that will drive me.

Stale air in lungs rasps and twists,
turns sour like an underwater cave.
Stomach tangles like seaweed stretching
and struggling to reach a glimpse of sunlight.
Barnacles stick and crunch at neurons.
A disturbing pressure:
words will never reach the surface.
Even silent ships sink.
Hull creaks and voice box vibrations
still fall on deaf ears.

At this point in my life, I don’t rewatch the poem. But I still revisit it and share it with those who need to see it. I am seventeen, at the end of the stanza. Instead of listening, it’s time for me to write my own story. I write of Ships.

Women are not ships.
We might be treated like them,
but our lungs have breath
and our hulls have voices.
When we sink, we rise, pushing back to the surface.
Alike only in pronouns, ships and women
are not the same. We are not yours.