"The Concept of Beauty" by Umamah Farooq
I have spent a lifetime trying to
understand the concept of beauty
without staring into a looking glass
only to find hate dressed in black,
mourning because it had to inhabit
a body that sometimes forgets
to look at itself in the light and feel alive.
No one taught me how to be beautiful
so, I think that means I'm not and there
really is no point trying to dig up
the remains of something that
never even existed in the first place.
Tell me how do you outrun the demon
that only exists in your shadow
or behind a reflection.
Don't tell me my brown skin reminds
you of brewing coffee because I hate
coffee it makes me gag and I cannot
spend another day washing the bitter
taste from my tongue with soap that
burns like acid in a mouth forced
to unlearn the way it smiles because
my crooked front teeth don’t deserve
an audience.
My origin story is nothing but another
version of myself yearning to be noticed
and there are only so many ways one
can shrink themselves to occupy
the loneliest corner of the universe until
it decides to imprison you there
and the only poems I write about myself
turn into eulogies and apology notes.
Maybe I just need to accept that the world
doesn't remember girls that look like me.
understand the concept of beauty
without staring into a looking glass
only to find hate dressed in black,
mourning because it had to inhabit
a body that sometimes forgets
to look at itself in the light and feel alive.
No one taught me how to be beautiful
so, I think that means I'm not and there
really is no point trying to dig up
the remains of something that
never even existed in the first place.
Tell me how do you outrun the demon
that only exists in your shadow
or behind a reflection.
Don't tell me my brown skin reminds
you of brewing coffee because I hate
coffee it makes me gag and I cannot
spend another day washing the bitter
taste from my tongue with soap that
burns like acid in a mouth forced
to unlearn the way it smiles because
my crooked front teeth don’t deserve
an audience.
My origin story is nothing but another
version of myself yearning to be noticed
and there are only so many ways one
can shrink themselves to occupy
the loneliest corner of the universe until
it decides to imprison you there
and the only poems I write about myself
turn into eulogies and apology notes.
Maybe I just need to accept that the world
doesn't remember girls that look like me.
Umamah Farooq (Instagram handle @_i.writes_) is a seventeen-year-old from Pakistan.