Hermosura

~Bethany Lauren Grigsby

Winter’s teeth bit our bones as we all huddled close
Passing around the yerba mate and sipping it quickly,
Hoping to unfreeze parts of our body that had froze
It was June
But instead of donning tank-tops and shorts and flip flops
I was in scarves and coats and boots
in rural Argentina, where June is not summer but winter

We were packed into the church like ice-sculptures posed for worship
When the gelatinous movement of children inundated the frosty air we breathed
Familiar eyes danced at the sight of me

Carla was twelve and the eldest of seven
And with a face as naïve as the summer’s sunrise,
She gazed into my blue eyes and stroked my light brown hair,
Drinking in every moment as though I was a vapor about to vanish in the air
She held my intricately-knit pink scarf in her hands like it was a delicate treasure

I suppose one should be flattered to be taken in with awestruck eyes,
But there was something about her gaze that felt more like a knife fashioned from pain
See, she looked at me like I was an angel who had fallen from magazine heaven
And my heart sank as I thought
“Child, my image is a symbol of a nightmare you’ve been given”
A nightmare that tells you that your darker skin and eyes
Will never be as beautiful or as elegant as mine

At the end of the day it is not my light skin or eyes that can or that need to change
It is a racist and colorist system that must be abolished and not just rearranged
For it is one that privileges the light-skinned, tall, and thin
Declaring what it means to be a beautiful human

I do not pretend to be one with a solution suddenly conceived
Fit to eradicate colonialism’s effects down to our present history
What I offer is but a humble hope and dream
That when society paints its portraits of beauty
It will begin to look more like twelve-year old girls from rural Argentina
instead of
always
looking
like
me