Hello? Yes this is she. This is… me. This is I. this is my eye, it’s brown. Brown, like my skin. Or like poop. But also like chocolate. Like oatmeal, brown sugar. Like burnt sugar. Like bookshelf, made from dead wood filled with tree ghosts. Trees. I am brown like trees. But also like dead leaves. But also like alive books before they’re books, so like trees. Alive trees. My body is brown like trees.
Dear you.
It is so much harder to love you up close.
My skin wants to feel the view on itself from treetops even if my eyes are more than okay with just settling on passing faces that you only settle on not always being close enough to touch. But my skin always wants more.
My body has become a collection of memories.
Photographs developed …show more content…
As if to make the memories on their skin less noticeable from afar
This is the way, I have learned to love myself from a distance
When I was younger
My whole world felt white
I couldn’t find a version of me anywhere
Not on TV or in movies and none in my daily life who weren’t family
I have not seen a portrayal of brownness not built out of stereotype
In college, I decide to grow my body hair as a way of reclaiming my beauty
As an act of unlearning my apologies of sorry that being me in my own skin is making you uncomfortable
Now, Whenever I visit home, my mother wants me to hide the two trees growing under my arms reminds me that she worries no one will want to be with me forever this way
No one wants a hairy brown girl, she says
Sometimes I feel guilty for causing her more anxiety
Her depression already keeps her up at night and these thoughts don’t make things easier
I want to show my family how we can be at peace with our bodies by me being at peace with mine
We disagree on many things but I could never blame my parents for not understanding this struggle
I am here because they did extraordinary things to survive built a new story for themselves in a country where they were strangers
Gave their past up for the future of their
Dear you.
It is so much harder to love you up close.
My skin wants to feel the view on itself from treetops even if my eyes are more than okay with just settling on passing faces that you only settle on not always being close enough to touch. But my skin always wants more.
My body has become a collection of memories.
Photographs developed …show more content…
As if to make the memories on their skin less noticeable from afar
This is the way, I have learned to love myself from a distance
When I was younger
My whole world felt white
I couldn’t find a version of me anywhere
Not on TV or in movies and none in my daily life who weren’t family
I have not seen a portrayal of brownness not built out of stereotype
In college, I decide to grow my body hair as a way of reclaiming my beauty
As an act of unlearning my apologies of sorry that being me in my own skin is making you uncomfortable
Now, Whenever I visit home, my mother wants me to hide the two trees growing under my arms reminds me that she worries no one will want to be with me forever this way
No one wants a hairy brown girl, she says
Sometimes I feel guilty for causing her more anxiety
Her depression already keeps her up at night and these thoughts don’t make things easier
I want to show my family how we can be at peace with our bodies by me being at peace with mine
We disagree on many things but I could never blame my parents for not understanding this struggle
I am here because they did extraordinary things to survive built a new story for themselves in a country where they were strangers
Gave their past up for the future of their