my issue with what they consider beautiful is
their concept of beauty
centres 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 upwards to the sky
like they’re rising
to the occasion
skin the colour 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 panjab
flow through my bloodstream
so don’t tell me my women
aren’t as beautiful
as the ones
in your country.
Poem by the incredible Rupi Kaur. Image- Photograph of mother and daughter by Grete Kolliner, 1931, via vintageindianclothing.tumblr.com.