For Girls Who Run Through Storms like Buffalos, Knowing It’s the Quickest Way Through

We were never ones to avoid pain 
even if we found him in another person.

And when we do (find him again)—
let him have not been born in the rain 

and grown up to become a storm. 
His kisses lightning that scorches the earth. 

As young girls, our grandmothers warned us 
When there is lightning, cover all the mirrors. 

But, one night thunder snapped; 
its rumble shattering the vanity.

We’ve chased cloudbursts ever since. 
Committed ourselves to flood and flight.

For girls like us who pray to the Sky Beings—  
Protect us whenever we go 
                                                    where we were never meant to be. 
Put tobacco down 
for the ones

with Creator-shaped holes in our hearts. 
We spend lifetimes trying to fill,

to feel. What is the medicine for this?

Our mothers tell us (as they taught) 
Send them love. Send them love. Send [say it] love—

So, praise our fathers who left in the night,
mapping us into unlovable.

They made us tough as nails. Now we know 
how to hold ourselves together.

Praise the ones who listened 
when girls like us asked them to leave.

Praise the lovers who never returned.
You helped us no longer be afraid of ghosts.

For girls like us, 
the wound never fully heals.

The gentle rhythm of its pulse, a reminder to
praise our mothers for teaching us words are seeds. 

We plant, bloom ourselves anew.
Praise the lightning. Praise the storms

we run through
because girls like us know—

this is where 
our medicine comes from.

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“During the pandemic, a high school poetry club of Indigenous students invited me to give a reading. I shared poems I’d written about murdered and missing Indigenous relatives, poems about ancestral wounds, [and poems] filled with hope for healing. At the end of my reading, one girl said, ‘Thank you for writing poems for girls like us.’ Her words stayed with me. This poem was written for her, for us, for Native girls who face heartache head-on, running through their lives’ storms to break cycles of trauma. This is for girls who find the blessings in the breaking.”
—Tanaya Winder