Drawing On Love

From the Margins, Priyanka Paul

Come join

Beauty

Those I love say they're proud of me, now

Tail-end of 8 months in infinity

I don't look for their words of affection.

I'm not scared to be ugly

In the way women are taught to be

All sunshine and beauty.

I do not doubt now,

That I may in fact be beautiful -

I am Beautiful

Not because I'm pretty

I don't turn heads when I walk the room

I'm hardly precious in dear finery.

What's more,

My hair doesn't always flirt with

The wind, my feet don't know how to

make love to the earth and grass, the show

Doesn't please lusty onlookers.

I pause when I see beauty,

A pleasant surprise waiting within me -

I don't wait to achieve anymore

I revel in my company.

I've learnt to hold friends tightly,

Look them in the eyes so

They may smile from inside me.

I forgive my family,

So they may not hurt any

Longer than I can help, for

all that I love about their journey.

I don't rest in the past anymore

I don't pine for a whimsy future

I'm elated to just be

And in being, I achieve me.

Based in the Philippines, multimedia artist Yvonne Quisumbing has made a name for herself creating wearable art for the fashion world. The designer also channels the fashion industry in her surreal paintings, which explore complex notions of beauty and identity. More on HiFructose.com.

There's only one precondition to marry me it's that we exercise solarpunk anarchy

from “sometimes i wish i felt the side effects” by Danez Smith, Poetry Magazine March 2018

Let Myrtle stay a myth

Where did I learn to mourn?

They've sworn it is the thing to do

That grief is growth

That innocence piously lost

Is the right romantic rite

Of passage to the mountain of mature .

I wonder if I never learnt to weep

With wistfulness - an unreal word

That makes mockery of me -

Worn as a worshipped curse,

Duped of its demonic reality .

I wonder if I'm possessed

By pain,

Or is this just mental blame game

Because I find myself

mourning after mourning

It has a crippling clench. Even

Clarity, though plain to see,

is barred from reach

By clouds or ghosts .

I wish — no I shouldn't —

that is the language of mourning.

Let it go

Let me go.