The year 2022 gave us #feralgirlsummer , which morphed into #bratgirlsummer in 2024 and then #messygirlsummer by 2025—all howls against the curated perfection of a hot girl summer . Chaos. Freedom. Truth with its crop top unbuttoned. Going beyond hashtags, these eras represent a refusal to be domesticated by societal expectations. Feral girlhood is a state of mind accessible to anyone who claims agency over their life. While we don’t yet know this year’s moniker, trust the feral girl will live on. I experienced my first feral girl summer in 2023 by trading my bikini waxes, bleach-and-tones, and spray tans for a pen and paper. It was the year I wrote the first draft of my debut poetry collection,   A Little Feral , though I didn’t know it would be titled that at the time. All I knew was that I wanted to write toward the grime, the grit, and the gall. I started posting some of my poems on my Instagram, and my DMs overflowed with folks connecting over our shared mess.…