Milk and Honey

by Rupi Kaur

father. you always call to say nothing in particular. you ask what i’m doing or where i am and when the silence stretches like a lifetime between us i scramble to find questions to keep the conversation going. what i long to say most is. i understand this world broke you. it has been so hard on your feet. i don’t blame you for not knowing how to remain soft with me. sometimes i stay up thinking of all the places you are hurting which you’ll never care to mention. i come from the same aching blood. from the same bone so desperate for attention i collapse in on myself. i am your daughter. i know the small talk is the only way you know how to tell me you love me. cause it is the only way i know how to tell you.

i can’t tell if my mother is terrified or in love with my father it all looks the same

i flinch when you touch me i fear it is him

i struggle so deeply to understand how someone can pour their entire soul blood and energy into someone without wanting anything in return - i will have to wait till i’m a mother

he placed his hands on my mind before reaching for my waist my hips or my lips he didn’t call me beautiful first he called me exquisite - how he touches me

he says i am sorry i am not an easy person to want i look at him surprised who said i wanted easy i don’t crave easy i crave goddamn difficult

the very thought of you has my legs spread apart like an easel with a canvas begging for art

i do not want to have you to fill the empty parts of me i want to be full on my own i want to be so complete i could light a whole city and then i want to have you cause the two of us combined could set it on fire

you might not have been my first love but you were the love that made all the other loves irrelevant

i didn’t leave because i stopped loving you i left because the longer i stayed the less i loved myself

i am a museum full of art but you had your eyes shut

i don’t know what living a balanced life feels like when i am sad i don’t cry i pour when i am happy i don’t smile i glow when i am angry i don’t yell i burn the good thing about feeling in extremes is when i love i give them wings but perhaps that isn’t such a good thing cause they always tend to leave and you should see me when my heart is broken i don’t grieve i shatter

the abused and the abuser - i have been both

do not look for healing at the feet of those who broke you

my issue with what they consider beautiful is their concept of beauty centers around excluding people i find hair beautiful when a woman wears it like a garden on her skin that is the definition of beauty big hooked noses pointing upward to the sky like they’re rising to the occasion skin the color of earth my ancestors planted crops on to feed a lineage of women with thighs thick as tree trunks eyes like almonds deeply hooded with conviction the rivers of punjab flow through my bloodstream so don’t tell me my women aren’t as beautiful as the ones in your country

accept yourself as you were designed

removing all the hair off your body is okay if that’s what you want to do just as much as keeping all the hair on your body is okay if that’s what you want to do - you belong only to yourself

you are your own soul mate

you have to stop searching for why at some point you have to leave it alone