beautiful until… | Pia Oza

i am beautiful until i take my clothes off/ and before the mirror, i stand/ starred (scarred)/ a constellation of/ all the things i hate/ a galaxy of stains, a solar system of blemishes/ and meteors that crack my surface. 
i am beautiful until i take my clothes off. / i am a planet of red and brown/ my skin a dried flower.
i don’t remember who i was/ before i was so flawed/ my body, a museum of war/ a coup, waged against me/ by my own body, / rebels with guns at the ready/ but no one ever teaches you how to fight yourself.
so when i woke up with wounds, / the aftermath of a war so brutal, / it was all i could do/ to use what the doctors told me would work/ creams and ointments and medicines and things to induce/ beauty, / and i apply them on the bruises/ so tenderly,/ as if they were my own,/ as if i started a fire and walked through it/ and smeared myself with my own ashes/ but i didn’t. 
because being scarred wasn’t my doing/ it was done to me/ by my own body.
if i wanted to romanticize it, i would say/ that i am a van gogh painting/ filled with vivid color, curated in a frenzy;
but that’s not how it feels/ to be scarred.
it’s not that i hate my body.
it’s that my body/ hates me.

I’m a 17 year old poet living in Mumbai, who’s obsessed with all things art – books, movies, music, poetry, paintings, all of it. Everything I see and feel finds a home in my words – be it confessional poetry or a simple book review. When I’m in my element, you can find me scribbling poetry, crying over a novel, watching an art history video, or sipping strong ginger-tea!