her milky white complexion

dripping with honey-colored  freckles

encapsulates his definition of perfection

while my dark and dirty features

are purely insubstantial

 

boys

why do their standards of beauty exclude me?

every boy who I strip my heart and my clothes for

has chosen a white girl

all they had to do was stand and look pretty

merely exist

and be white

 

but I want my skin, the color of the earth

the same earth which my mother trudged through

to carry the stories of my female lineage

to be considered beautiful

 

I want the garden of hair on my skin

to grow as mother nature intended

 

and I want my curved nose to smell the flowers

rather than altering its shape to his ideals of perfection

 

I want the features which I have earned from my female lineage

my cocoa colored eyes

and my thick, dark, indian hair

to showcase the beauty of generations before me

 

I want the women in my family to be just as beautiful

as her fair skin and icy blue eyes

and I wish he could see that my bloodstream

contains the sweat and tears of my family history