I was ten, they laughed at my teeth—
It wasn’t the first time, but it stung me skin deep,
Twelve, a boy called me by my skin -black cat,
The teacher’s giggle erased my smile.
Thirteen, fairness creams became my birthday gifts.
Fourteen, I blamed the mirror first, dare never to face me again,
Fifteen, silence became safer than speaking.
I began to hate the flesh which clothed me.
This nose—broad, uneven, unwanted—stitched to my face without my vote,
My skin was bruised by words; the nurse could have washed it off.
No consent form, no design chart, just signed with blood.
It wasn’t my choice, yet I was under constant gaze
Eyes not dreamy, lips not curved, cheeks aren’t shining
I was told—fix it, hide it, bleach it, shrink it.
But this is the only canvas I was handed without edit or undo options.
And I’m tired of trying to repaint it for your museum.
From science’s tongue, I’m just a soup of chromosomes,
My face is the byproduct of several ancestral choices.
Skin and hair tone are layered for survival; high melanin to protect from sunlight
Every cell in me is a million years old; I’m matter regenerated.
But the world reads DNA like a flaw— aesthetic disability,
They could have edited my genes in my mother’s womb
They forget: evolution favours the odd. I’m infinite changes.
Still, I am punished for being nature’s real version.
If God made me, ‘Made by God’ is engraved on this misaligned frame.
I am His mindful brushstroke, not a printing error.
He molded dirt, not diamonds, made in his image, and called it good.
But humans spit on the clay and spare the potter.
They forgot the Creator never made clones—only stories shelved in skin.
If you mock my face, you mock His crafty hands.
Every line, every shade—divinely intentional, to make me unique
Yet judged by another pile of dirt, crafted by the same potter
Some tribes, some generations, somewhere on this shapeless earth—
Black is beauty, wide hips are wealth, big mouths are musical.
Stretched ears, tattooed foreheads, coiled necks like royalty.
A gap between teeth: a charm, not a curse.
There, beauty blooms in what’s discarded elsewhere.
The world is not one mirror; reflection changes by the water’s color
Every creature is beautiful when mind is pure and clean
Who decides some are ugly, some are divine?
We quote Plato, sing Whitman’s songs,
Yet never stop to ask what they looked like.
We frame their thoughts, not their faces.
No one says, ‘Shakespeare was ugly, so he’s irrelevant.’
We quote their minds and canonize their madness,
But ignore the madness we inflict on the living.
Worship the words of the wrinkled and dead,
Yet mock the girl with a birthmark.
They say—“Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder.”
But the beholder is commercially driven.
For them beauty is curated, filtered, assign sex appeal.
They sell us faces, not feelings, labels people as fit vs unfit
They crucify the raw under the surgical blade, and resurrect the fake.
Keats and many wrote the truth, but the world reads fashion blogs.
‘Accept the way you are’ is trimmed before correcting the jawline.
The beholders lie; and we buy it.
But then—my child taught me the truth
His small palms cupped my face like it was treasure.
Eyes wide in pure delight, saw me in acceptance.
His love without a gaze redeemed me from self-doubt.
She smiles all day long, gulps every drop without questioning the shape
Kissed every inch of my face; stamped ‘it’s beautiful’
She called me beautiful for my care and compassion,
And for the first time, I realised, I’m both the ‘beauty and the beholder’.
Let beauty be ‘the breath’ after a panic attack.
A smile under a huge limp, not a supermodel’s pose.
Foreheads kissed in hospital rooms before leaving for surgery.
Wrinkled hands that held grief like gospel.
Let beauty be expressing the self, not approval.
The soul that keeps flouting, inside a temporal temple.
Let it be mine—unclaimed, undefined, undefeated.
Let it be real—even if it’s never recognized.