Milk and Honey

by Rupi Kaur

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.

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

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

he placed his hands on my mind before reaching for my waist my hips or my lips

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

how do you turn a forest fire like me so soft i turn into running water

i need someone who knows struggle as well as i do someone willing to hold my feet in their lap on days it is too difficult to stand the type of person who gives exactly what i need before i even know i need it the type of lover who hears me even when i do not speak is the type of understanding i demand

we’re like fingers on thorns honey. we know exactly where it hurts.

the toxin in our mouths has burnt holes in our cheeks.

you mustn’t have to make them want you they must want you themselves

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

when you are broken and he has left you do not question whether you were enough the problem was you were so enough he was not able to carry it

i had to leave i was tired of allowing you to make me feel anything less than whole

you were the most beautiful thing i’d ever felt till now. and i was convinced you’d remain the most beautiful thing i’d ever feel. do you know how limiting that is. to think at such a ripe young age i’d experienced the most exhilarating person i’d ever meet. how i’d spend the rest of my life just settling. to think i’d tasted the rawest form of honey and everything else would be refined and synthetic. that nothing beyond this point would add up. that all the years beyond me could not combine themselves to be sweeter than you.

the abused and the abuser

i was music but you had your ears cut off

i will not have you build me into your life when what i want is to build a life with you

you were not wrong for leaving you were wrong for coming back and thinking you could have me when it was convenient and leave when it was not

neither of us is happy but neither of us wants to leave so we keep breaking one another and calling it love

people go but how they left always stays

you cannot leave and have me too i cannot exist in two places at once

i am water soft enough to offer life tough enough to drown it away

as if i was already not these things before i met you. as if i did not remain all these once you left.

why they forced you to love them when they had no intention of loving you back and they’ll say something along the lines of i just had to try. i had to give it a chance. it was you after all.

but that isn’t romantic. it isn’t sweet. the idea that they were so engulfed by your existence they had to risk breaking it for the sake of knowing they weren’t the one missing out. your existence meant that little next to their curiosity of you.

isn’t it sad and funny how people have more guts these days to undress you with their fingers than they do to pick up the phone and call. apologize. for the loss. and this is how you lose her.

the way they leave tells you everything

sometimes the apology never comes when it is wanted and when it comes it is neither wanted nor needed

go slowly like a broken promise let it go

our backs tell stories no books have the spine to carry

other women’s bodies are not our battlegrounds

the recreational use of this body is seen as beautiful while its nature is seen as ugly

something as simple as what you’re born with is the most you have to be proud of

how you love yourself is how you teach others to love you

some people are so bitter to them you must be kindest

we all move forward when we recognize how resilient and striking the women around us are

at the end of the day all this means nothing this page where you’re sitting your degree your job the money nothing even matters except love and human connection

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

if you are not enough for yourself you will never be enough for someone else

of course i want to be successful but i don’t crave success for me i need to be successful to gain enough milk and honey to help those around me succeed

our struggle to celebrate each other is what’s proven most difficult in being human

and you must never trade honesty for relatability