THESE SCARS ARE NOT BEAUTIFUL

-SARA TRIPATHI

We are all born with bodies like daisy

Soft, tender and delicate

A little frayed around the edges and with scents of freshness.

We are born with bodies like blank canvases,

Waiting to be painted, with struggles of survival,

With specks of sunshine happiness, with ups and downs and wrongs and rights,

With beliefs, and with a gift of this life.

Like everyone else’s my body was also a delicate daisy,

A blank canvas, to be painted with happy colors

Yellows and pinks and blues

But that’s not how I’m going to paint it,

For this is my body and I want it to be a display

Of the struggles and wars and pain and despair,

Of grief and sadness that’s a bit too much to bear.

So when you see my scars,

Don’t try to summon them up as beautiful.

Don’t call my scars beautiful for they are not,

They are the emblem engraved onto my body,

An emblem, of survival and how ruthless it is,

An emblem of how much grief I bear,

An emblem of the horrid things I’ve been through and horrid things I have done to survive.

So don’t call my scars beautiful, for they are not,

They are the symbol of my bravery

And how recklessly I’ve fought on the battle field

They are not beautiful and they’ll never be

They will always remind me of the blood I’ve shed

And the tears that have flown out of my eyes,

They are the remnants of how cruel a battle field is

And how cruel you have to be, to win the war.

So don’t call my scars beautiful,

For these marks on my body and skin are engraved deep into my soul

Through my bones,

For these scars are my armor and I will proudly put them on display,

For the world to see, for the world to know

That I’m no daisy soft and fine, I’m a spiky twiny creeper vine.

So don’t call my scars beautiful,

For I will not hesitate to use my armor as my ammo

And I will not be afraid to fight till my last breath

For it has taken me countless battle fields, and many blood filled wars, with myself and with others,

To find my peace and I will not let anything dismantle this peace that was found

After so much chaos,

And I’ll let everyone know that I’ve fought before and I’ll

 Not be afraid to fight again

For I’m a scarred brave warrior, with chaos running in my veins waiting to be unleashed,

And wrath running through my bones, ready to seep out, and wreck everything in its way.

So don’t call my scars beautiful,

For these emblem and symbols of my bravery

Cannot and will not be summoned in the mere walls of beauty,

For there is so much more to them that just fragile, delicate beauty

And I will not let them be clustered in the idea of something we ourselves are not even sure about,

For there is much more to them than just a few delicate words and fragile touches and lingering stares,

For there is no power known to mankind, that can summon these scars

For they are sacred, `cause of every step I didn’t want to take but I took

`cause of every breath in didn’t want to take but I did

And `cause of every battle I didn’t wanna fight, but my innocent delicate daisy like self had to.

This all, every struggle, every lesson, every ounce of pain, and every loss I have faced

This all made it sacred.

So don’t call my scars beautiful,

For they are not,

Because they are paints I chose for my blank canvas of a body,

And unlike beauty nothing can hinder their existence,

For they don’t fade with time,

In fact they become more and more pristine

Like carvings on an ancient monument,

Or like deep words on a grave stone.

These are my scars, and they are not beautiful,

For I believe beauty is myth.

These scars are the proof of how I have survived.

And I chose it to be that way,

So this is how it goes

Some die like daisy, soft and kind,

And some die like rebels, with glass shards and thorny vines.