'Milk and Honey', Rupi Kaur

Rating: 5/10

Overall Thoughts

Split into four chapters, (i) the hurting, (ii) the loving, (iii) the breaking, and (iv) the healing, Rupi Kaur writes about experiences of love, loss, violence, abuse and femininity in 'Milk and Honey'.  However, majority of Kaur's poetry are just simple sentences broken up with spaces.  Therefore, this collection would not be to everyone's liking. 

The book is filled with beautiful illustrations/visuals and leaves readers with an important message :-

"sex takes the consent of two
if one person is lying there not doing anything
cause they are not ready
or not in the mood
or simply don't want to 
yet the other is having sex
with their body it's not love
it is rape"

Having recently worked with an independent feminist organization, I do believe that this book would be highly relatable to survivors of domestic abuse and intimate partner violence and to any women who have experienced any form of violence or discrimination. 

To survivors of rape:-

"the rape will
tear you 
in half
but it 
will not
end you"

Favourites from 'Milk and Honey'

"you have sadness

living in places

sadness shouldn't live"

.....

"you tell me to quiet down cause

my opinions make me less beautiful

but I was not made with a fire in my belly

so I could be put out

I was not made with a lightness on my tongue

so I could be easy to swallow

I was made heavy

half blade and half silk

difficult to forget and not east

for the mind to follow"

.....

"he placed his hands

on my mind

before reaching

for my waist

my hips

or my lips

he didn't call me

beautiful first

he called me

exquisite"

- how he touches me

.....

"i'd be lying if i said

you make me speechless

the truth is you make my

tongue so weak it forgets

what language to speak in"

.....

"I need someone

who knows struggle

as well as I do

someone

willing to hold my feet in their lap

on days it is too difficult to stand

the type of person who gives

exactly what I need

before I even know I need it

the type of lover who hears me

even when I do not speak

is the type of understanding

I demand"

- the type of lover I need

.....

"I always 

get myself

into this mess

I always let him

tell me I am beautiful

and half believe it

I always jump thinking

he will catch me

at the fall

I am hopelessly

a lover and

a dreamer and

that will be the 

death of me"

.....

"the next time you

have your coffee black

you'll taste the bitter

state he left you in

it will make you weep

but you'll never stop drinking

you'd rather have the

darkest parts of him

than have nothing"

.....

"I am confident I am over you. so much that some

mornings I wake up with a smile on my face and

my hands pressed together thanking the universe

for pulling you out of me. thank god I cry. thank

god you left. I would not be the empire I am today

if you had stayed.

but then.

there are some nights I imagine what I might do if

you showed up. how if you walked into the room

this very second every awful thing you've ever

done would be tossed out the closest window and 

all the love would rise up again. it would pour

through my eyes as if it never really left in the first

place. as if it's been practicing how to stay silent

so long only so it could be this loud on your arrival.

can someone explain that. how even when the love

leaves. it doesn't leave. how even when I am so

past you. I am so helplessly brought back to you."