Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth

by Warsan Shire

You were a city exiled from skin, your mouth a burning church.

His face is a photograph left out in the sun,

She knows loss intimately, carries whole cities in her belly.

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?

Your daughter’s face is a small riot, her hands are a civil war, a refugee camp behind each ear,