Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth

by Warsan Shire

This is what she does best: makes you sick with the need to help.

Anything that leaves her mouth sounds like sex. Our mother has banned her from saying God’s name.

No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark.

I’ve been carrying the old anthem in my mouth for so long that there’s no space for another song, another tongue or another language.

Do they not know that stability is like a lover with a sweet mouth upon your body one second; the next you are a tremor lying on the floor covered in rubble and old currency waiting for its return. All I can say is, I was once like you, the apathy, the pity, the ungrateful placement and 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.

Apathy is the same as war, it all kills you,

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 lie down and watch the world burn in his bedroom?