sixteen

aisha weththasingha

for the past few cycles of the moon,
i have been illiterate on how to
write sixteen. yesterday i sipped
orange juice for the vitamin, and it tasted
like chlorine (like the community pool,
unclean with rotten oak leaves and
skin to skin). i’ve found i look prettier in
motion, in videos, and maybe this is why
my redefined “girl” spends an extra few billion to
match her definition; something about utilizing personality to
wash away ethnic features (as in, otherwise
give into your one-time use, bubble-wrap
of a beauty standard.) sixteen is my peak, i’ve been told;
and i think i’d like to pursue philosophy to
figure myself out but i guess such
pursuits aren’t fit for this lineage or
genetic code, whatever. hey! i
heard you the first time,
can you let me breathe now? is
this all i am worth? but you haven’t even seen
my waist yet, or my defined collarbones, or
the jawline? let me pay with my body, please,
if you won’t take my brain. oh god I
am turning sixteen, and i haven’t even had
sex yet. is that normal? this girl gives compliments by comparing
faces to a visually blurring effect and how strange is that? i
am hoping to be like the altered camera frame today: front
facing, no flash, reteach me. i am reaching graduation soon, and yet it
feels as if the older i get, the younger i feel.
it seems that at just 12 i wanted nothing more
than to sit in bed and sip tea all day.
(i forget i am still a child), i am turning sixteen
on june twenty sixth (626!) and have been
dreading the infamous, romanticized
hot girl summer (woe!); i am turning sixteen and
i love my friends and i want nothing more now than
to lie on the burning concrete of
southern california and
melt into the grit. this is my
silly sort of privileged self-sabotage, and still
i am here, stuck in an eternally waning thursday,
using my woman philosophy to remind myself
i am nothing but reused star ash, and the world
moves on. i am turning sixteen, but i am also
walking into my grave; it is all the same.

Aisha Weththasingha is a junior at Oaks Christian School, Westlake Village, CA. She has been nationally recognized by the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers, DePaul University, Gigantic Sequins, and National Poetry Quarterly, among others. Her work is published or is forthcoming in Breakwater Review, DePaul’s Blue Book, Teen Sequins, Writers Circle Journal, The Echo, American High School Poets - In Like a Lion 2025 anthology, and Blue Marble Review, among others. She serves as an Editor-in-Chief of Polyphony Lit. Aisha holds childlike wonder and finds inspiration in the world around her—from the soiled grooves of cement to a conspicuously horseshoe-shaped cloud. She is inspired by life.