Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth

by Warsan Shire

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. I’m bloated with language I can’t afford to forget.

Her body is a flooding home.

Apathy is the same as war, it all kills you, she says. Slow like cancer in the breast or fast like a machete in the neck.

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