A book of great depth and poetry, Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur claims to take its readers through a journey of heartache and bitterness before restoring sweetness to the world... and it does exactly that. This book is a great short read for anyone how has 30 minutes to spare and is looking for a new perspective of exceptionally relatable experiences. Rather you are looking to delve into the experiences of love, loss, violence, or abuse, Milk and Honey thoroughly covers it all. The following are a few excerpts that I personally found particularly fascinating. Because it is poetry, although I am tempted to rant about my personal interpretations and feelings regarding each excerpt, I will leave it to you to interpret however you deem fit.
"What terrifies me most is how we foam at the mouth with envy when others succeed but sigh in relief when they are failing. Our struggle to celebrate each other is what's proven most difficult in being human."
"'How is it so easy for you to be kind to people?' he asked. Milk and honey dripped from my lips as I answered "cause people have not been kind to me."
"Tell them I was the warmest place you knew and that you turned me cold."
"Do you need me or do you need someone- there is a difference."
"I do not want to have you to fill the empty parts of me. I want to be full on my own. I want to be so complete I could light a whole city, and then I want to have you cause the two of us combines could set it on fire."
"You must want to spend the rest of your life with yourself first."
"My tongue is sour from the hunger of missing you."
"Neither of us is happy, but neither of us wants to leave, so we just keep breaking one another and calling it love."
"You said, 'If it is meant to be fate will bring us back together'. For a second I wondered if you were really that naive. If you really believed fate worked like that. As if it lived in the sky staring down at us. As if it was not already within us. As if fate was not the choices we make. As if it had five fingers and it spent its time placing us like pieces of chess. Who taught you that. Tell me. Go on. Who convinced you you'd been given a heart and a mind but it wasn't yours to use. That your actions did not define what would become of you. I wanted to scream. Shout. It's us you fool. We're the only ones that can bring us back together. But instead I sat there quietly, smiling softly through quivering lips, thinking 'Isn't it such a tragic thing, when you can see it so clearly but the other person doesn't."
"What is stronger than the human heart which shatters over and over and still lives."
"Most importantly love like it's the only thing you know how. At the end of the day all this means nothing. This page, where you're sitting, your degree, your job, the money. Nothing even matters except love and human connection, who you loved and how deeply you loved them, how you touched the people around you and how much you gave them."
Hopefully these excepts have struck your fancy as much as they struck mine. If so, you should most definitely consider purchasing Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur in order to further delve into a world of heartache and sweetness.
