Harsh

“You only leave home
when home won't let you stay.”
- Warsan Shire, Home

“I know a few things to be true. I do not know where I am going, where I have come from is disappearing, I am unwelcome and my beauty is not beauty here. My body is burning with the shame of not belonging.”
- Warsan Shire, Teaching My Mother How To Give Birth

“I watch the news and my mouth becomes a sink full of blood. The lines, the forms, the people at the desks, the calling cards, the immigration officers, the looks on the street, the cold settling deep into my bones, the English classes at night, the distance I am from home. But all of this is better than the scent of a woman completely on fire, or a truckload of men, who look like my father pulling out my teeth and nails, or fourteen men between my legs, or a gun, or a promise, or a lie, or his name, or his manhood in my mouth.”
- Warsan Shire, Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth  


Some are born
into an unforgiving landscape.
They find themselves in the dark ages.

Their tribe is stuck with leaders
who still prescribe an eye for an eye,
a tooth for a tooth.

Pity she who has a face that does not fit.