Your daughter is ugly.<br />She knows loss intimately,<br />carries whole cities in her belly.<br /><br />As a child, relatives wouldn’t hold her.<br />She was splintered wood and sea water.<br />They said she reminded them of the war.<br /><br />On her fifteenth birthday you taught her<br />how to tie her hair like rope <br />and smoke it over burning frankincense.<br /><br />You made her gargle rosewater<br />and while she coughed, said<br />macaanto girls like you shouldn’t smell<br />of lonely or empty.<br /><br />You are her mother.<br />Why did you not warn her,<br />hold her like a rotting boat<br />and tell her that men will not love her<br />if she is covered in continents,<br />if her teeth are small colonies,<br />if her stomach is an island<br />if her thighs are borders?<br /><br />What man wants to lay down <br />and watch the world burn <br />in his bedroom? <br /><br />Your daughter’s face is a small riot,<br />her hands are a civil war,<br />a refugee camp behind each ear,<br />a body littered with ugly things<br /><br />but God, <br />doesn’t she wear<br />the world well.