Sugar and Spice

She liked nearly all things sugar, but looking at her skin

People assumed she’d choose spice, something different

Yes, she could handle the flavor, but they didn’t see

That sometimes she preferred something simple

A classic American dish, even—a slice of gorgeous

Apple pie washed down with mango lassi in a glass.

She stared into the bewitching glass.

There was a dust of sugar across her lips, snow against the skin

Of her smiling brown face, a gorgeous

Glint to her caramel eyes. She wasn’t that different,

And she wondered why others had it so simple,

Because she had fit in just fine across the sparkling sea.

Once upon a time she thought she’d soon make the voyage back, fly above the thrashing sea

And home, but time began to run instead of walk, and in the glass

She could see herself change. It wasn’t simple,

The way her body curved now, the way her own skin

Felt like the foreigner the kids at school knew her to be. She’d always been different,

But now even she could not recognize herself because people called her gorgeous.

If she had a list of words to define herself, gorgeous

Would have been nowhere near it. It would have sat in the corner, for no one to see

Because yesterday she had been a curry lover. Why was today different?

It didn’t matter. It lied anyway, the glass.

It didn’t show the spiders underneath her skin,

Or the way she desperately yearned to be simple.

Teenage years were supposed to be simple,

Right? You did stupid things, you kissed gorgeous

Boys and learned which parts of the skin

To enunciate for others to see

And yet there were no boys, only her and the glass

In which all she saw was different.

Mostly her different

Was on the outside, but it became less simple

When it leaked inwards, through the glass

And past everything people thought gorgeous,

Until it festered into something deep as the sea

Then she began to hate her skin.

Of course her skin had always been different,

And gorgeous was something new to the glass,

Yet everything she wanted to be was simple.