#abilouwrites

[abilouwrites]

SMELLS & SUMMER

Reminiscing as a Persian girl who wanted so badly to be white

Someone told me that you can smell death in your finals hours. Sweet; sour. Reminiscent of childhood.

For me I would think it might smell like pistachio and rosewater ice cream and hot summer nights on my grandmothers Persian carpets. Sweating as I toss and turn in these musty sleeping bags.

Sitting up late with my dad as we watch cat videos and drink tea; I’ll tell him my feelings and those moments are some that I’ll still love as I die.

I love the summer; memories of laying in the grass as the sprinklers go off. Jumping into the cool pool from the toasted hot tub. Screaming underneath water.

I think death doesn’t smell like charred flesh, smoke and fire. I think death smells like childhood, wet grass. Fairy potions, bike tires. Falling on the asphalt. The burn of my bare feet

My childhood summers were spent in car rides to Los Angeles, seeing my grandparents. My bubba. Sitting on his lap as he tells me stories of the military, my grandmother teaching me to make Kabab Koobideh. She always told me to be proud of my heritage.

“Love yourself before you love someone else” she would tell me; kissing all over my face and my hair.

We would eat pistachios and other Persian treats together as she would paint me in the sunset; she would spend hours on my paintings. Making sure she got every freckle, loose eyelash, and curl in my hair.

She kissed the blonde strands that covered my face. The brunette that shone through.

I used to cry because I wasn’t white and blonde, cried because I wasn’t skinny enough to fit into my friends jeans. I bawled because my hair wasn’t blonde and it wasn’t pin straight. Was upset because I tanned so quickly while my friends burned.

Sat staring at myself in the mirror as my mother put her powder on my face and someone thought I was sick.

I’m older now; still struggling to love myself because I see my friends ‘tan’ be my pale. And through all of this; somehow I still feel like a fraud.

A Persian girl but I don’t speak Farsi, white but not white enough to be white. Persian but you can tell that I’m not 100%

But I don’t think that matters anymore. Because that was in the 2000’s. When being the whitest of white was trendy; but now I see myself. My culture and my body become a trend and I can’t help but feel used.

Maybe a little abused as I look at the little me who just wanted to be like everyone else

[a1leexxa]

i think about how @abilouwrites and I have come a long way in fandoms