Elsa Sajjad – Milk [Video]

By Button Poetry

A Category Winner of the 2021 Button Poetry video contest.
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Transcript provided by YouTube (unedited)

0:05
(child giggling lightly)
0:07
– [Softly Voice] It’s 2003
0:09
and my mother tells me to drink my milk.
0:12
It’s good for you, it’ll make your legs longer,
0:15
your nails stronger and your hair as smooth as silk.
0:19
Drink every drop don’t stop
0:20
till you reach the bottom of the glass,
0:22
you’ll be at the top of your class.
0:23
It’ll make your brain sharper,
0:25
your concentration better,
0:26
just remember to finish your milk.
0:30
I list the benefits of milk in my head.
0:33
That’s all I can think of
0:34
as his hands worm their ways down my thighs.
0:37
How stupid was I?
0:39
In that moment, I hate milk.
0:42
Finish your milk.
0:43
I hate milk for making me tall.
0:45
Screw you milk.
0:46
Why’d you make me tall, tall, but not strong,
0:48
not strong enough to throw him off me.
0:50
Not smart enough to figure a way out of this mess.
0:52
Finish your milk, fuck you milk this is all your fault.
0:54
No, actually it’s capitalism.
0:55
Capitalism and false advertising.
0:57
I lay there despising my mother
0:59
for investing in milk cartons instead of karate classes.
1:02
Finish your milk
1:05
It’s 2018, and I finally realize
1:07
it’s not the milk I despised,
1:08
but the sparkle in my mother’s eyes,
1:10
when she spends hours talking to me about nutrition,
1:12
homework, and exercise.
1:13
Delusional that that’s all being a good parent means
1:16
but she doesn’t talk about how the means to my destruction
1:18
would be the lack of knowledge that harassment happens,
1:20
and it’s not my fault.
1:21
How my consent should be held with the highest regard
1:23
and how rape is real, it is so real.
1:28
Finish your milk.
1:31
I think about the future a lot, how I want a daughter
1:35
and I want her to be strong and tall.
1:39
But most of all, I want her to know
1:42
there are things more important in life
1:44
than knowing the benefits of milk.
1:48
(milk dripping softly)

—

This post was previously published on YouTube.

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