Beauty
by Imani Ortiz

Note: Poet Warriors write with truth and purpose; this poem contains strong language, graphic details and/or sensitive subject matter.

Beauty.

Beauty is long silky hair, pretty eyes, big thighs, a huge ass and titties that you cannot hide.

Beauty is rags covered in accessories that don’t even have enough strength to cover you or make up that covers you up more than your clothes do when the two are being horrendously and outrageously confused.

Beauty is shaking your ass and sending ‘thirst traps’ to guys who don’t even really want you for you but want you for that.

Beauty is talking that ‘shit’ and bucking like your tough when you just feel offended from what a person did to you.

Beauty is a word that describes everything that isn’t true.

Beauty is when you see upside down furniture on the verge of crumbling into old ruins because of the horrific horror film that you hear every night.

You call it a masterpiece as you see pieces of your mothers fine China on the floor, sparkling like the crimson red blood that stained her face that she tried to hide from you but still wanted you to see it the night before.

Or when the night sky drowns you like the heavy pull of the ocean and the stars are your visions of your life flashing before your eyes when you know your drama movie will start; you’ll be astounded by the screams and how natural they sound, it’s almost like it’s perfect acting yet you know it’s an actual thing that happens from day to day.

You know you’ll have perfect surround sound as the pounds and hits sound like meat being battered down and tender; instead you know it’s the sound of flesh and skin being peeled and weakened. Being softened at its finest.

But at least you have a front view of the HD screen tv because you know you don’t want your shadows to watch it.

Beauty is accepting and loving yourself for who you are.

Embracing the most favorable traits that God uniquely and creatively gave to you.

You feel blessed because you know your so prepossessing to the eye.

Your so alluring, males adore you like they adore plenty other women while in the ‘talking’ stage with you.

Beauty is being not only fair on the outside but feeling ugly within.

Beauty is breaking yourself down, like thoughts that come in and drive you crazy, almost having you running up the wall.

Having your chest cave in from the lack of breath you have because you’ve either held it in too much for fear or have let it go too much for others to take.

Tearing yourself apart piece by piece and giving others the little that you have only to leave you with a little bit of nothing.

Beauty is a word that describes everything that isn’t true.

Beauty is when you have a father that says he loves you more than himself when in reality he loves himself more than you.

Probably more than YOU actually do.

But no, daddy says he does. Daddy says he’ll never hurt you but I guess that didn’t include the copyright of hurting the emotions that you didn’t know even existed inside of you.

Daddy says it’s okay I’ll always keep you safe. But see, daddy is no where to be found, and now you go out and find another daddy to be around.

But those daddy’s aren’t the daddy’s you thought you were looking for.

Your daddy, and those other daddy’s were all the people who messed you up even more.

You handed them your trust and your love on a silver platter.

And they gave you roses.

They’re beautiful aren’t they? They’re beautiful to the eye but to the touch they bring pain from the thorns aligning the stem, just like the men with their thorn attached to their stem who honestly just wanted you for the body you had.

But all you wanted was a daddy that you’ve been longing for since birth. The type of daddy who loves with affection and not materialistic things. The daddy who spends his time with you and not with other women right in front of you with a front seat view. Because it’s funny how daddy wanted to see you but left when he made you.

Beauty is giving yourself to a boy who isn’t a man yet.

Physically yes but mentally and emotionally, not yet.

And it’s crazy because it seems we all grow too fast, people call us ‘too grown’ but you never really learned our past.

And you raised us but don’t claim us and your now ashamed.

But it’s okay we’re used to us being called less than our names.

It’s something that’s been happening generation after generation and we’re forced to be ‘too grown ‘ because we fill in spots that were supposed to be already taken.

Our men are called boys and our women are little girls who just ‘wants’ attention.

Our women are ‘bitches’ for caring too much or caring too less.

‘Bitches’ for everything we do or don’t do, to behold and to possess. Or being taken advantage of by another man. Being beaten down so much And not just physically but mentally too.

I guess that’s why we have so much ‘issues’.

And Our men have been broken down, taught to never cry or show emotion.

All you see is anger.

Misunderstanding that it’s shown as anger but it’s just hurt and exhaustion of living a ‘life’.

Translating to a smack in the face and being a bitch.

But to others that don’t understand it’s just another ‘cold hearted nigga’

Who cares about nothing besides himself.

And now, sadly, their integrity is no longer an existence of anything.

They’re Taught to stand up for themselves and do right for themselves.

But they can barely do that when their legs are being taken from under them constantly. Literally. Them, having the audacity to put another one of our men in handcuffs.

Or being beaten to death or just flat out killed in front of his wife and kids.

And sometimes, they wonder, why us children have no fathers.

Either because of being killed by them or because they’re too messed up in the head to know what the first step is to being a father so they leave and think they’re better off anyway, even though they knew the first step of what to do when his baby momma was wrapped in the sheets, intertwined with his body.

These images created of us are unfortunately true but it’s not our fault, it started with the people who thought ‘divided races’ was a mandatory issue.

We’re told we aren’t queens nor kings anymore and most of us believe it’s true.

Us women don’t know our value and our men don’t know their worth.

“What’s our purpose?” We ask.

And still no one knows an answer but God himself.

It’s sad to see most of us trying to bare live a life that hasn’t even begun, Yet we want it to end so desperately.

But as I said, beauty is a word that describes everything that isn’t true.