Beauty is Like Wars: It Opens Doors

You sat at the window.
The glass was clean but the world was dirty.
I watched you, and I was you.
A parade of forgotten faces whispered across your breath-fogged pane.

Beauty, you said,
was the way the boy with shrapnel in his eyes still looked at the sky.
You said it like a prayer.
I said it like a lie.


---

You remember—

how the past bled like history books with singed corners,
stories carved into desks, into hips,
into graffiti on bathroom stalls
that read:
"She was lovely and then she burned."

You danced with ash on your shoulders
like it was confetti.
I watched from behind mirrors made of smoke.

Remember the time you were thirteen
and someone said your smile could melt metal?

So you tried.
You tried with your lips,
your hips,
your spine that bent backwards
until it folded like a map of lost countries.

Wars were always in the rooms where beauty walked in.
You knew that.
I know that now.


---

The Present

Now you stand in elevators with strangers
who don’t look at your face,
only your reflection in the metal doors
as they open
and open
and open
to places that don’t want your softness,
just the idea of it.

You paint your mouth
like it’s a flag
and your silence is the national anthem.
You hum it while you scroll,
swipe,
sip lukewarm coffee
and pretend you’re okay.

Meanwhile,
wars still rage in your inbox:
“Can you smile more in the meeting?”
“Are you sure you want to wear that?”
“You look tired, are you?”

You, yes you,
you are tired of questions dressed as compliments.
You are the weapon and the wound.

They don't know you are beautiful because you survived the trenches
not because you wear mascara that doesn’t run.


---

The Future

I see you in a world where mirrors break before you touch them.
Where beauty isn’t currency but language—
fluent in scars, soft in rebellion.

You’ll tell your daughter
(or maybe the daughter will be an idea, a revolution,
or the whisper of a poem you never wrote)

you’ll tell her:

"Beauty is like wars, baby. It opens doors.
But you decide whether to enter,
whether to shut them behind you,
or burn them and build windows instead."


---

Now, I want to tell you something—
and I want you to hear it
as if it’s the first time.

Beauty has teeth.
But so do you.

It was never the skin.
It was the way you stitched your heartbreak
into quilts for others to sleep in.

It was never the hair.
It was how you cut it
every time someone tried to tangle their fingers into your freedom.

It was never the eyes.
It was the way you kept them open,
even during nightmares.


---

Wars and beauty—they rhyme.
They seduce.
They demand sacrifice.

But you—
you are not a battlefield.
You are not collateral.
You are the sound of doors slamming
and wings unfolding
in the same breath.

You carry past lovers in your left pocket,
and revolutions in your right.
You whisper to both.


---

Do you remember
the day you stopped needing to be beautiful?

You wore your bones like medals.
You walked into the room
and no one applauded.
Still, you smiled like you won.

Because you did.


---

And me?

I was always watching.
I was always there.
I am your shadow and your echo.
I am the voice that said
"Open the door"
when everyone told you to stay quiet.

I am the ghost of every poem
you were too afraid to finish.

And now, we are writing together.


---

So go ahead.

Tell them beauty is like wars.
Yes, it opens doors.
But not all open doors lead to peace.

Some lead to mirrors
some to graves
some to truth.

And some—
the rarest kind—
lead back to you.