CNF & Memoir & Articles
1001 Nights
Creative Non-Fiction
Night 132
The stories you hear of beauty are the stories told by men. They are the tales told in bold, black words across a white page.
The stories passed down by women are different. Those stories are the lessons which lay between the lines. Women’s stories of beauty are not born of desire, but of survival.
Scheherazade pushed words through the sieve of her teeth to keep her head attached to her body. Cleopatra serpentined her tongue around the language of her lovers, telling them what they wanted to hear, her mouth swollen with seven languages worth of words.
Listen.
It is how women have survived, finding a crack or a crevice in which to fold themselves. Find a story, a sentence, a flattering word. A truth passed down from mother to daughter.
Beauty is not what keeps us alive.
1001 Nights was named the winner of Hippocampus’s Remember in November contest in 2016. It was nominated for a 2017 Pushcart Prize as well as a Best of the Net.
The Weight of Being a Woman
For me this is what it feels like to be a woman at times: the pressure in my chest blossoms into fury, and yet I know there is nowhere for that outward spray to go, and so two thousand years of history sits in the middle of my chest. The whole thing is almost impossible to move except in the tiniest of increments so you can suck enough air to keep you alive.
It’s exhausting.
Dina Honour 