Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth

by Warsan Shire

mouth bloody with grapes,

bird chests clinking like wood, boyish, long skirted figurines waiting to grow into our hunger.

Her hair is in my mouth when I try to move in closer– how does it feel? She turns to her sisters and a laugh that is not hers stretches from her body like a moan.

I finger the hole in my shorts,

daring her to look at me and give me what I had not lost: a name.

Her new voice is sophisticated.

learning to kiss with her new tongue.

Some nights his thumb is the moon nestled just under her rib.

Her body is one long sigh.

I count my ribs before I go to sleep.

torso swollen with pride, her arms fleshy wings bound to her body, ignorant of flight.

My mother says no one can fight it – the body returning to God, but the way she fell, face first, in the dirt, mouth full of earth, air, teeth, blood,

begging god in falsetto.

Love this one

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. I know a shame that shrouds, totally engulfs. I tore up and ate my own passport in an airport hotel.

My body is burning with the shame of not belonging, my body is longing. I am the sin of memory and the absence of memory.

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.

that maybe we can keep the nipple.

the woman who cooled your tea pouring it like the weight of deeds between bowl and cup, until the steam would rise like a ghost.