beauty

Memories of the past when children used to simulate what beauty is

Using towels as hair and my mother’s shoes a model I became

The idea that long flowing hair was a reflection of beauty

Entrenched in my mind as a child I found solitude in that way

The way I brushed the towel from side to side

As if simulated the vision that white was beautiful

The blackness in me I set aside in the notion that long hair was beauty I would ride

 My black pride set asunder my mother’s scoldering words

To my tiny self it felt like thunder

This misconception of beauty was imbedded in long hair and model looks

And that white people were the clay that the definition of beauty was modelled from

As a teen with my looks I became obsessed

And still the notion of long flowing hair in my soul became entrenched

Different weaves and time consumed with beauty products

The notion that white was perfect at my soul it began to eat

Until finally in societies notion of beauty I proclaimed defeat

The long hair and perfect body the sensation of inferiority became visible

The stress of living up to the notion of beauty became too great

Until my pride rose up and put up a fight

The shackles of society came tumbling down as the razor come racing through

The notion that long hair signalled beauty

Black is beautiful the echoes of those words came shinning through

And the essence of my beauty in my short hair finally triumphed