By Masingita Masunga
My kind of beautiful was never meant for museums. It would set the frames on fire.
I have walked through infernos and emerged wearing molten gold where my skin used to be.
You cannot humiliate a woman who has knelt before her own darkness and kissed it without flinching.
I have tasted every bitter corner of myself,
held grief against my bare chest until it forgot how to bite.
I never ran from my ache, I undressed it,
traced every scar like sacred scripture,
whispered its true name until it dissolved into something that could finally be loved.
You cannot tame me. I tucked my chaos into bed. I made love to my fury until it purred beneath my hands. I learned that the wild inside me was never a beast to conquer,
but a language no one else knew how to speak.
I do not bloom despite the storm. I bloom because lightning recognised something familiar in me.
So throw your stones. I’ll catch every one.
I’ll carve poetry into your doubt, stack your judgments into pillars, and build a cathedral from every name you tried to bury me beneath, because holy has never meant untouched. It has always meant surviving the fire without surrendering the soul.
Call me sinner. Call me saint.
I’ve worn both names like borrowed dresses
and neither fit as beautifully as simply being myself.
I have met my edges in mirrors that shattered just to make room for all of me.
I have drunk from my own wounds until the blood became communion, until pain became nectar, until survival became something softer than revenge— it became freedom.
So if you come to shame me, bring your finest words. I’ll receive every projection
like a beautifully wrapped gift, untie the ribbon with my teeth, smooth the paper with gentle hands, and hang it on my wall beside every scar that refused to become a prison.
Nothing you call me can compete with the namesI have already survived.
Every pearl I wear, was born from an irritation that never succeeded in breaking me.
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