Poem Analysis: Salt By Nayyirah Waheed

For my 21st birthday I decided to get a tattoo of a poem from my favorite poetry book, Salt by Nayyirah Waheed.

This poem has a lot of meaning for a lot of reasons. For a very long time, starting from the beginning of middle school, I was very unhappy. I put on a good face every day but deep down I didn’t like who I was. I kept finding flaws when looking in the mirror and I ended up hating the person who was looking back at me. I kept feeding this hatred all throughout middle school, high school, and even in college. During 8th grade I started taking this hatred out on myself. I started hitting myself because I thought that I needed to be punished for everything that I thought was wrong with me. Towards the end of my senior year of high school I stopped hitting myself and turned to cutting. I did a lot of harm all around my body and each time I hurt myself a scar formed. The scars around my body represented each of the flaws I saw within myself that I hated so much. Eventually
I have a lot of scars here, some more prominent than others. For a long part of my life I have hated these scars. I always thought they were ugly and reminded me of all the flaws that I thought I had. What has changed now is that when I look at these scars, I don’t think of them as being ugly. I think they are beautiful. For a very long time I was never able to appreciate all that I am and these scars have made me who I am. Looking back at everything I have been through (and everything I have done to myself), I now understand how strong, how amazing, and how beautiful I am. I got this tattoo on my arm not as a cover up but rather to display their beauty. The poem says ‘I found flaws and they were beautiful.’ I found flaws throughout my life and today I am able to say that all the flaws that I found were beautiful. And more importantly, I am able to finally say that I am