Warsan Shire

I don’t recognize my own children
they speak and dream in the wrong language
as much as I understand
it may as well be the language of birds

Diets of excess, deep allegiance
to the adage “If you don’t laugh, you’ll cry.”
And they laugh so hard they weep.

I can write the poem and make it disappear.

Daughter is synonymous with traitor,
their father mutters
in his sleep.

I’ll rewrite this whole life and this time there’ll be so much love,
you won’t be able to see beyond it.

At parties I point to my body and say
Oh, this old thing? This is where men come to die.

I don’t know when love became elusive.
My mother’s laughter in a dark room.
What I know is that no one I knew had it.
My father’s arms around my mother’s neck.
A door halfway open.
Fruit too ripe to eat.

UNBEARABLE WEIGHT OF STAYING

Your girlhood an incubation for madness.

Bless their topless bodies, smelling like outside.