Milk and Honey

by Rupi Kaur

you look just like your mother i guess i do carry her tenderness well you both have the same eyes cause we are both exhausted and the hands we share the same wilting fingers but that rage your mother doesn’t wear that anger you’re right this rage is the one thing i get from my father (homage to warsan shire’s inheritance

when my mother was pregnant with her second child i was four i pointed at her swollen belly confused at how my mother had gotten so big in such little time my father scooped me in his tree trunk arms and said the closest thing to god on this earth is a woman’s body it’s where life comes from and to have a grown man tell me something so powerful at such a young age changed me to see the entire universe rested at my mother’s feet

no it won’t be love at first sight when we meet it’ll be love at first remembrance cause i’ve seen you in my mother’s eyes when she tells me to marry the type of man i’d want to raise my son to be like