Safiah farhan

what if 

oh, what if they had taught our boys that it's not a sin to cry, they'd still have hearts today.
(everyone has a heart but a heart that feels for other people  what a rare thing  my brother stopped crying because they told him that his tears were a matter of pride  so i taught him how to cry again)
oh, what if they had taught us genuine love for others, we wouldn't be the cold hearted bullies we are today.
(it was like a never ending race  they only cared about the winner no humanity, no empathy, nothing  just kids pushing themselves to reach the top no kindness was ever shown in that hellhole so i taught kindness to myself)
oh, what if they had taught us that our futures aren't decided by red stamps on papers, we'd be poets by today.
(no one taught me  how to write from the heart  how to write poems  so i became a poet myself)
oh, what if they had taught us self love instead of meaningless equations, we'd still have hope today.
(everytime i looked at my body  i used to flinch in disgust  because they only saw the flaws  never did they teach me self love  never. never. never 
​(so i taught it to myself)

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how i see art

​they think that art needs to beautiful. i think that art needs to be angry. loud and catastrophic. 

because they see art in intricate  strokes of blue and green but i see art in my father's eyes; grey and exhausted of the country that rejects him because he's unable to string the english language in careful sentences.

i see art in the calluses on my mother's palms. she claims that all she does is knead dough, someone tell her she's built more than just a home.

i see art in a black woman who they belittled as a child, told her that she'd be nothing, that she'd never be at the top. spoiler alert: they all work for her now. 

i see art in a woman giving birth to her son after two miscarriages at 3:06 in the morning. the rest of the world is dead but she's never felt more alive. 

i see art everywhere and nowhere just at once. my heart is captivated by things that scream fury. it is captivated by things which screams empathy and not beauty.

i do not think that art needs to be pretty. it needs to be powerful. ​​