Beauty pains

It's true. Beauty can pain. Because it's exactly then that you realise that something else isn't beautiful. You aren't beautiful, your life isn't beautiful, no man's love for you has ever been beautiful enough. It's then that the contrast bites. And for some of us, we find ourselves feeling like miss Celie does in Alice Walker's, The Color Purple;

Tell me the truth, she say, do you mind if [your husband] sleep with me?
I think, I don’t care who [he] sleep with. But I don’t say that. I say, You might get big again... You like to sleep with him? I ast.
Yeah,.. she say,.. I just love it. Don’t you?
Naw, I say. I don’t like it at all. What is it like? He git up on you, heist your nightgown round your waist, plunge in. Most times I pretend I ain’t there. He never know the difference. Never ast me how I feel, nothing. Just do his business, get off, go to sleep.
She start to laugh. Do his business, she say. Do his business. Why, Miss Celie. You make it sound like he going to the toilet on you.
That what it feel like, I say.
She stop laughing...


....But when I hear them together all I can do is pull the quilt over my head and finger my little button and titties and cry.