Before the Mirror

I long to be beautiful,
not for the eyes that pass me on the street and forget me
before they have finished passing,
not for the hands that have held me
and then, in time, learned to hold something else,
not even for the ones who called me beautiful
and meant it in the moment, sudden and warm as weather,
here today and gone again by evening.

I long to be beautiful for the one witness
I can never dismiss, never persuade, never leave behind
in a city or a decade or a marriage:
MYSELF, standing where the mirror keeps its silence,
patient as an old friend who has learned
not to rush me toward the truth.

Ghalib once said the wound is also a mouth,
and it too must be allowed to speak.
So let me speak of the wound of wanting,
not shameful, only human, only as old
as the first woman who ever caught her own reflection
in still water and wondered, is that me,
or someone I was promised and never became?

Every mirror since has asked her question again,
in glass, in windows, in the black screen of a phone
gone dark for a moment before the light returns.

I long for eyes I cannot look away from,
not because they are large, or bright, or rimmed in kohl
like the doors of a temple flung open at dawn,
but because something lives behind them
that refuses to apologize for being looked at.

I want eyes that hold weather in them,
storm on the bad days, and on the good ones
a stillness so complete that people forget to speak
when they meet them.

I long for a nose drawn like a single decisive line,
sharp as a truth finally spoken
after years of being folded small and put away,
and just as rarely merciful,
a ridge and a slope that make no apology
for taking up the space between two cheeks
that have earned every inch of themselves.

I long for lips that hold a thousand unsaid things,
lips that have kissed goodbye more than hello,
that have said I'm fine when they meant the opposite,
and yet still curve, at the corners, toward softness,
toward luscious, toward a fullness that says:
I have suffered and I still know how to want.

And skin, I long for skin that tells no lies
about the nights I did not sleep, and yet
glows anyway, clear as the hour just before dawn
when even grief looks, for a moment, gentle.

I long for a neck that lifts my head,
a stem holding up a flower
that has decided, against every argument of gravity
and every year that tried to bend it down,
to bloom anyway, long enough to carry pride
without it ever curdling into vanity,
graceful as a swan, not from trying
but from having stopped
apologizing for the space it displaces on the water.

I long for shoulders broad enough to carry what I carry,
and unbowed by it, every promise kept long after
the people who asked for it forgot they had,
every weight I picked up simply because no one else would.
I want shoulders that earned their squareness honestly,
not built up as armor, but shaped by the plain habit
of refusing to fold.

I long for a chest that carries itself prideful,
not puffed for show, but lifted as pride lifts
anything it has rightfully earned, a ribcage
that doesn't apologize for taking up its share of air,
that rises without asking permission first,
that has finally learned not to fold inward
whenever a room turns its gaze the wrong way.

I long for a body that is lean where I have starved myself
of ease and rest and second helpings of joy,
and full where I have finally, finally allowed myself
to take up room, curved not to please a hand
that might not stay, but curved to prove
that softness and strength were never enemies,
that a body can be a shoreline: yielding, and still
the very thing that holds the ocean in its shape.

I long for a waistline that remembers it once held life,
or almost did, or chose not to, or simply held itself
steady through every season that tried to talk it smaller.
Not narrow to prove a number stitched into a label,
but narrow like a river gathering itself before a bend,
a pause before abundance, never a punishment for it.

I long for hips curved enough to be mythical,
the mermaid kind, built for a body that moves
like water deciding its own course around any rock
placed in its way. Not curved to be measured,
not curved to fit a doorway someone else designed,
but curved because that is the shape strength takes
when it has nothing left to prove.

I long for legs long enough to have carried me
out of every room that no longer wanted me in it,
legs that know the exact weight of walking away
and the harder, stranger weight of walking back.
I want legs that stand without apology,
planted the width of a decision already made.

I long for fingers that have written what needed writing,
that have unknotted what needed unknotting and held
what needed holding, and nails kept neither bitten to nothing
nor armored past use, just clean, just capable,
the kind that could thread a needle or slap a table
when a table needed slapping. I want hands that look
like they have done something with a life,
because they have.

I long for hair long enough to be mistaken for a rope,
long enough to climb out of every room
I once thought I belonged in but didn't,
straight and dark and heavy as a decision
finally made after years of almost,
hair that moves like something with its own opinions,
that a hand could get lost in and, for a while,
forget the way back out.

I long for a glow that isn't light borrowed
from a filter, a flattering window, a generous hour,
a color that deepens instead of fading in the sun,
skin that holds its own warmth like a lamp
left on in a house where someone finally,
finally feels safe enough to stop bracing
for the dark.

I want to shine the way certain women
shine after the worst year of their life,
not despite it, but because they metabolized it
into something that catches the light differently now.

I do not want this beauty paraded.
I do not want it photographed at the flattering angle,
posted for a hundred strangers to confirm what I already know,
or don't. I do not want it as currency, as a means
of being chosen, kept, or fought over.
I want it as a woman wants a locked room in her own house,
not to invite anyone in, but simply to know it is hers,
fully hers, furnished exactly as she likes it,
with no one else's opinion hung on the walls.

Gibran wrote that beauty is not in the face,
it is a light in the heart.
And I believe him. I trust it,
even though I have never fully seen it proven.
But tonight I am tired of parables.
Tonight I want the face too.

I want to know, once, plainly, without metaphor
standing between me and the answer,
how it feels to be beautiful,
not admired, not photographed, not complimented
by someone who wants something after the compliment,
just beautiful, the way a mountain is beautiful,
without needing a single person to confirm it,
without needing the mountain to ask.

And so I stand at the crossroads of my own becoming,
in a bathroom with bad lighting and an honest mirror,
and I ask myself an old, unkind question,
turning it over like a stone in my palm,
to see what's living underneath it.

Should I want to be a child again,
unaware that beauty was ever a currency,
loved simply for existing, loud and unbrushed and free,
before anyone taught me to measure my own face
against a face that wasn't mine?

Or should I want to stay forever young,
skin taut with the arrogance of time not yet spent,
believing, with the reckless certainty only the young carry,
that the mirror will always be this kind,
that this particular light will last?

Or should I want what I am slowly becoming now,
the middle of my own story, where the face
has finally stopped asking permission to exist,
where I no longer trip over every small unkindness
because I have learned, the hard way, and more than once,
which ones matter and which ones
were never mine to carry in the first place?

Ghalib knew that longing outlives its object,
that even the beloved, once finally held,
leaves some quieter ache still standing in the doorway.
So even if I woke tomorrow wearing
the exact face I have prayed for in the dark,
some hunger would remain, because it was never
only the eyes, the nose, the skin, the length of the hair,
it was always the ache to be witnessed,
truly seen, and found worthy of the seeing,
by the one judge I can never bribe, outrun,
or convince with a better angle: myself.

But beauty that stops at the skin isn't enough for me.
I want the beauty nobody photographs.

I want kindness, the kind that gives even when it costs me,
even when no one is counting.
I want gentleness that people mistake for softness,
until they see what it survived to get here.
I want honesty, plain and unglamorous,
even when a lie would have been so much easier.
I want loyalty that doesn't need good weather to show up.
I want generosity that doesn't wait to be asked.
I want affection that never runs dry,
and a lovingness that comes as naturally as breathing.
I want to be hardworking, hands that do the work
nobody claps for, and still show up the next day.
I want truthfulness, even when it shakes on the way out.

I want patience. I want courage.
I want humility enough to be wrong sometimes.
I want to forgive without forgetting,
and still choose peace anyway.
I want compassion wide enough to hold someone else's mess.
I want the kind of wisdom you only earn the hard way.
I want gratitude that doesn't wait for good news to show up.

And so much more than I can even name yet,
this is the beauty I am still building,
one small choice at a time,
and God, I hope You're keeping count,
because I am trying.