Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth

by Warsan Shire

Mother, loosen my tongue or adorn me with a lighter burden. — Audre Lorde

makes you sick with the need to help.

Last night in bed I swear I thought my body was on fire.

I hope the journey meant more than miles because all of my children are in the water.

But Alhamdulilah 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.

now my home is the mouth of a shark, now my home is the barrel of a gun. I’ll see you on the other side.

Your grandfather is dying. He begs you Take me home yaqay, I just want to see it one last time; you don’t know how to tell him that it won’t be anything like the way he left it.

We want to know what the water will take away from us, what the earth will claim as its own.

Apathy is the same as war, it all kills you, she says.

But God, doesn’t she wear the world well?

To my daughter I will say, ‘when the men come, set yourself on fire’.