How far have you walked for men who’ve never held your feet in their laps? how often have you bartered with bone, only to sell yourself short? why do you find the unavailable so alluring? where did it begin? what went wrong? and who made you feel so worthless? if they wanted you, wouldn’t they have chosen you? all this time, you were begging for love silently; thinking they couldn’t hear you, but they smelt it on you. you must have known that they could taste the desperate on your skin. and what about the others that would do anything for you, why did you make them love you until you could not stand it? how are you both of these women, both flighty and needful? where did you learn this, to want what does not want you?
where did you learn this, to leave those that want to stay?
QUESTIONS FOR THE WOMAN I WAS LAST NIGHT Warsan Shire
You are a horse running alone and he tries to tame you compares you to an impossible highway to a burning house says you are blinding him that he could never leave you forget you want anything but you you dizzy him, you are unbearable every woman before or after you is doused in your name you fill his mouth his teeth ache with memory of taste his body just a long shadow seeking yours but you are always too intense frightening in the way you want him unashamed and sacrificial he tells you that no man can live up to the one who lives in your head and you tried to change didn’t you? closed your mouth more tried to be softer prettier less volatile, less awake but even when sleeping you could feel him travelling away from you in his dreams so what did you want to do love split his head open? you can’t make homes out of human beings someone should have already told you that a and if he wants to leave then let him leave you are terrifying and strange and beautiful something not everyone knows how to love.”
FOR WOMEN WHO ARE DIFFICULT TO LOVE Warsan Shire
Why do you live in your body like you will be given another? As if it were temporary. You starve it, you let anyone touch it, you berate it. Tell it that it should be completely different. You tug at your soft flesh, wish it thinner, wish it gone. You fell in love with those who praise the way it sighs under their hands, but who praises the way it holds up your weight, even when you are falling apart?
PRAISE Warsan Shire
You want me to be a tragic backdrop so that you can appear to be illuminated, so that people can say ‘wow, isn’t she so terribly brave to love a man who is so obviously sad?’ You think I’ll be the dark sky so you can be the star? I’ll swallow you whole.
WHOLE Warsan Shire
Under their breath, someone said.: By the time I’ve finished with you, you won’t know whether you’ve been kissed or cut. whether you were loved or butchered. and either way you probably won’t care. just grateful you came close enough to touch.
GRATEFUL Warsan Shire
Your daughter is ugly. She knows loss intimately, carries whole cities in her belly. As a child, relatives wouldn’t hold her. She was splintered wood and sea water. They said she reminded them of the war. On her fifteenth birthday you taught her how to tie her hair like rope and smoke it over burning frankincense. You made her gargle rosewater and while she coughed, said macaanto girls like you shouldn’t smell of lonely or empty. You are her mother. 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 lay down and watch the world burn in his bedroom? Your daughter’s face is a small riot, her hands are a civil war, a refugee camp behind each ear, a body littered with ugly things but God, doesn’t she wear the world well.
UGLY Warsan Shire