Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth

by Warsan Shire

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, my body is longing.

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

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