Milk and Honey

Kaur addresses multiple ways someone can be affected negatively by their upbringing. She focuses on her distant relationship with her father, his relationship with her mother, the ramifications of sexual abuse, and the difficulties of growing up in a community that values silence over honesty. The title “The Hurting” is apropos, as this section deals with memories of sexual assault and the difficulty of having a healthy relationship afterward.

The section begins with an unnamed man asking the speaker “how is it so easy for you / to be kind to people” (3). The speaker answers “cause people have not / been kind to me” (3). His question and the fact that subsequent poems can be read as its answers may identify her interlocutor as the child psychologist referenced later. The speaker explains “the hurting” that makes intimacy difficult, revealing early childhood lessons regarding sexuality and violence that have hampered her feelings of safety and trust.

The speaker recounts several incidents from her childhood that still impact her in the present, starting with her first kiss, at age five. The boy “held [her] shoulders down” and “had the smell of / starvation on his lips” (4). Just as the boy learned this behavior from his parents, so she can’t help but internalize the negative lesson that “[her] body was / for giving to those that wanted” (13). The resulting feeling of emptiness contributes to her later belief that sex is a “pit stop for men”—“a place to rest” (5) without emotional ties. 

The impact of the past on the present is the result of trauma. The speaker was sexually assaulted as a child. “[T]ell me how I’m / supposed to forget” (6) the abuse “uncles” (7) inflicted, she asks the listener. The “midweek sessions” (7) with a therapist did little: After discussing the abuse through the use of a therapeutic doll, the speaker still felt “numb” (7). This pivotal act of violence left the child feeling as a “rose / in the hands of those” who will not tend it (10).

Using the personal as a gateway into the universal, the speaker broadens her experience of her father in a warning for all fathers. The speaker feels betrayed by her father, whom should have been her “first male love” (11) but instead is someone she must “search for […] everywhere” (8). Thus, all fathers should know how their actions can harm their children: “every time you / tell your daughter / you yell at her / out of love / you teach her to confuse / anger with kindness” (12). Later, in adult relationships, these daughters will accept abuse “cause [the men] look so much / like [the father]” (12). As a result, the speaker has skewed ideas of “what safety look[s] like” and has fallen “into / arms that were not [safe]” (13). She has “had sex,” but has no experience with “making love” (12).

By speaking out about childhood abuse, the speaker became aware that certain topics were off limits within her cultural sphere and family home. She internalizes this silencing: “you were so afraid / of my voice / I decided to be / afraid of it too” (9). Now, she accuses the South Asian and Indian community of believing that a “woman will / bring dishonor into a home / if she tries to keep her heart / and her body safe” (16). Those who should have supported the speaker refused to help her heal. 

Kaur here compares this frustration to an image of rape: Being told not to speak out is like an abuser “pin[ning her] legs to the ground with [their] feet” (17) and then insisting she stand up. The suggestion is that by silencing her, the speaker’s community and family traumatized her in the same way that her sexual assault did. The speaker internalized her family’s expectations for women—“shrinking is hereditary” (21), so the speaker learned to “shrink for a family / who likes their daughters invisible” (25). Nevertheless, reassures herself that “the rape will / tear you / in half // but it will not / end you” (18). 

The strife in her parents’ marriage was also harmful. The speaker felt like a “border between two countries” (24)—an image that hearkens to her immigration from India to Canada. She realized that “[her] father shoves the word hush / between [her mother’s] lips” (27)—another example of women being silenced. The complex dynamic was confusing: The speaker “can’t tell if [her] mother is / terrified or in love with / [her] father” (32); later, the speaker will similarly distrust her own perceptions in adult relationships.

The speaker’s sexual trauma is part of a long history of abuse: The women in her family have had their “knees / pried open / by cousins / and uncles / and men” (28). Their post-stress reactions fed into her own, with internalized self-abnegation causing the speaker to repeat, like a mantra, “i am nothing / i am nothing / i am nothing” (25). The short staccato lines suggest hyperventilation, a physical response to trauma. 

In the present, adult consensual sexual encounters still result in feelings of violation and silencing. When a partner “ploughs into [her]” and she “do[es] not like it” (30), the speaker nevertheless lies that it feels good, giving in to the cultural expectations of male desire and consent. Despite the speaker’s efforts, the speaker’s fear remains pervasive. The closing poem shows the speaker “flinch[ing]” at another’s touch because “I fear it is him” (31).