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A recipe for melanin
When you
lather on bleaching peroxide with your misfit glove
(translucent poison seeping down caustic cells)
Run your smooth velvet locks through a sizzling stove
(rich rivulets straightened to shrivelling straws)
And bruise parts of yourself you can’t begin to relove
Remember what brown girls are truly made of.
Two drops of honey gently placed
oceanic spheres sitting deep and unfazed
kind irises on auburn lotus leaves
quietly stirring in tiny ponds of zeal.
Five tablespoons of salty hickory syrup
spindled vines stretching like coiling carob
slippery strands gliding a waterfall of molasses
stretching around a bronze crown of gushing tresses.
Three cups of molten melanin- a satin cover
a blazen lighthouse for every sunken lover
films of brown sugar onto which fractured souls clutch
lustrous crystals crumbing from wet, tender touch.
So memorize this recipe as salty liquid fills
dark pupils brimming with melting chocolate hills
Because when your uniquely rusted ingredients drive insanity
you’re a glowing force of nature sighing mundanity.
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Girls of colour are often taught to hate the tints of their skins by the beauty standards perpetuated by today's society. Craving acceptance like all other teenagers, they feel left out and hate the melanin that makes them human. In a desperate attempt to assimilate, these girls change their ethnic characteristics to fit mundane norms, unaware of the powerful forces of nature they are. As someone who always struggled with the colour of my skin, I'm extremely passionate about this issue and through this poem hope to teach young girls of colour to love themselves and appreciate their beauty.