
Michaela
Something Beautiful
I heard somewhere when I was too young
That beauty is pain. A fact. Nonchalant and laughing:
Beauty is pain
In reference to high heels and the little agony of tweezing and
All the practices to make our natural conform
To silly standards making someone money
From our painstaking self-denigration.
Even as I discard drivel after trammel,
I must concede:
Beauty is pain.
Yes, it is the pain our aunties told us, and
More so the torment bred within us, questions like weeds growing up to choke
The life from our smiles, the confidence from our spirits
Until we rally and remember
How much greater the concept of beauty
Than starving starlets and lines toed just so.
Beauty is what our mothers taught us when their voices soothed
Or when they showed that fearsome strength that
Held the family together. Beauty is what our sisters showed
When they held our breaking hearts in their arms
And told us "you deserve so much better".
You were beautiful when you went through the hardest time
In your life; when you moved heavily, when you were bare
And raw, so scalded you wished you could be stone.
Beauty is a brick house and damn! girl,
You are building it up daily into something indescribable
It takes work to make
Something beautiful