A Brown Story

My face doesn’t fit

the foreign metaphors.

I know no standard

to measure its worth.

Not pale nor slim

with coloured polka dots

on even cheeks.

A repository of melanin,

of pride and pain.

My skin is made of

melting sunsets.

The pages of history

salivates hunger –

of forced famines

and starved slumbers.

I know no fragrance

save the spices

which are ingrained

in my being.

The uncivilised being.

I smell of cardamom

and cinnamon.

Turmeric rests on

my garlic finger-tips.

My tongue savours

the rage descended

down the generation.

The curls of my hair

where dusk transitions

into night, have no space

in poetic phrases

of golden threads.

They don’t float on the air

with the privilege

of ignorance.

They cascade down

my spine with testimonies

of the oppressed.

The coconut oil fuels

the portrait of

the imprisoned past.

My locks are stories

of colonised screams.

My contoured body

is mapped with

colonial wounds.

I drape the Western myths

with a cotton shroud

and cremate the shame

I’m conditioned to perform.

Your narrative will never

lend ears to my story.

Hence, I ink

my own brown breath

that stinks of indigo debris

I can no longer swallow.

I'm Ruman Noushin, a twenty-year-old girl from India pursuing English literature. My field of interest is postcolonialism. I'm an aspiring poet whose poetry is based on social problems and the consequent identity crisis.