Inspired: Warsan Shire

How far have you walked for men who’ve never held your feet in their laps?

how often have you bartered with bone, only to sell yourself short?

why do you find the unavailable so alluring?

where did it begin?

what went wrong?

and who made you feel so worthless?

if they wanted you, wouldn’t they have chosen you?

all this time, you were begging for love silently; thinking they couldn’t hear you,

but they smelt it on you.

you must have known that they could taste the desperate on your skin.

and what about the others that would do anything for you, why did you make them love you until you could not stand it?

how are you both of these women, both flighty and needful?

where did you learn this, to want what does not want you? 
where did you learn this, to leave those that want to stay?

  QUESTIONS FOR THE WOMAN I WAS LAST NIGHT

  Warsan Shire

You are a horse running alone

and he tries to tame you compares you to an impossible highway

to a burning house

says you are blinding him

that he could never leave you

forget you want anything but you

you dizzy him,

you are unbearable every woman before or after you

is doused in your name

you fill his mouth his teeth ache with memory of taste

his body just a long shadow seeking yours

but you are always too intense

frightening in the way you want him

unashamed and sacrificial he tells you that no man can live up to the one who

lives in your head

and you tried to change didn’t you?

closed your mouth more tried to be softer

prettier

less volatile, less awake

but even when sleeping you could feel him travelling away from you in his dreams

so what did you want to do love

split his head open?

you can’t make homes out of human beings

someone should have already told you that a

and if he wants to leave then let him leave

you are terrifying

and strange and beautiful

something not everyone knows how to love.”

  FOR WOMEN WHO ARE DIFFICULT TO LOVE

  Warsan Shire

Why do you live in your body

like you will be given another?

As if it were temporary.

You starve it,

you let anyone touch it,

you berate it.

Tell it that it should be completely different.

You tug at your soft flesh,

wish it thinner,

wish it gone.

You fell in love with those

who praise the way it sighs

under their hands,

but who praises the way

it holds up your weight,

even when you are falling apart?

  PRAISE

  Warsan Shire

You want me to be a tragic backdrop so that you can appear to be illuminated, so that people can say ‘wow, isn’t she so terribly brave to love a man who is so obviously sad?’ You think I’ll be the dark sky so you can be the star? I’ll swallow you whole.

  WHOLE

  Warsan Shire

Under their breath, someone said.:

By the time I’ve finished with you, you won’t know whether you’ve been kissed or cut. whether you were loved or butchered. and either way you probably won’t care. just grateful you came close enough to touch.

  GRATEFUL

  Warsan Shire

Your daughter is ugly.

She knows loss intimately,

carries whole cities in her belly.

As a child, relatives wouldn’t hold her.

She was splintered wood and sea water.

They said she reminded them of the war.

On her fifteenth birthday you taught her

how to tie her hair like rope

and smoke it over burning frankincense.

You made her gargle rosewater and while she coughed, said

macaanto girls like you shouldn’t smell

of lonely or empty.

You are her mother.

Why did you not warn her,

hold her like a rotting boat

and tell her that men will not love her

if she is covered in continents,

if her teeth are small colonies,

if her stomach is an island

if her thighs are borders?

What man wants to lay down

and watch the world burn

in his bedroom?

Your daughter’s face is a small riot,

her hands are a civil war,

a refugee camp behind each ear,

a body littered with ugly things

but God,

doesn’t she wear

the world well.

  UGLY

  Warsan Shire