HIS DEFINITION OF BEAUTIFUL

I am not beautiful, I am not pretty. I am beautiful for my kind, gorgeous for my skin tone, He says, “I am not into girls like you but you are pretty for a black girl” A backhanded compliment my black hands want to wring his neck

His neck is a pasty white complexion, I think if mine matched

Could I be just pretty? His neck so transparent I can see the blood of his ancestors flowing

He cannot see the blood that his ancestors shed Pumping through me He has a steady stream of supremacy Where mine is ongoing oppression I should not be surprised, as a child he was taught to fear the dark As if my skin is some monstrosity under his bed But my dark skin was birthed from years of struggles and fights My dark skin should be a delight but then I realize I am nothing more than new to him He sees me not as a person but as an adventure Something outside the realms of his Cancun tanned standards My black skin was not made to be pushed into the shadows This complexion not meant to hidden, so if that’s your plan You better be hittin' the road He says, “You are pretty for a black girl” I say I am ethereal I say I am God’s gift, I say he created the soil to mirror me The soil gives birth to flowers I give birth to stories and stubbornness And one day a beautiful black daughter who will hear “You are pretty for a black girl’ But she will not believe it, she will not say thank you and bow her head

She will raise a brow and ask why, she will stand tall, fist raised to the sky

Until the entire world knows She is pretty for a human

#poem #beauty