Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth by Warsan Shire

That same evening she visited a friend, a girl who fermented wine illegally in her bedroom. On waking she found her dress was wet and sticking to her stomach, half moons bitten into her thighs. She held her breath for so long that she blacked out. Your mother was sixteen when he first kissed her. She remembers hearing this from your uncle, then going to your bedroom and lying down on the floor.

The first boy to kiss your mother later raped women when the war broke out.

I did not beg him to stay because I was begging God that he would not leave. What Your Mother Told You After Your Father Left I have my mother’s mouth and my father’s eyes on my face they are still together.

Mother, loosen my tongue or adorn me with a lighter burden. 10) Produced in the United Kingdom Published by the mouthmark series, 2011 a pamphlet series of flipped eye publishing All Rights Reserved Cover Design by Effi Ibok Series Design © flipped eye publishing, 2006 First Edition Copyright © Warsan Shire 2011 Print ISBN: 978-1-90 Teaching My Mother How To Give Birth mouthmark series (No. Literary pointillism on a funked-out canvas No one leaves home until home is a damp voice in your ear saying leave, run now, i don't know what i've become.Teaching My Mother How To Give Birth by Warsan Shire I want to go home, but home is the mouth of a shark home is the barrel of the gun and no one would leave home unless home chased you to the shore unless home tells you to leave what you could not behind, even if it was human. The dirty looks in the street softer than a limb torn off, the indignity of everyday life more tender than fourteen men who look like your father, between your legs, insults easier to swallow than rubble, than your child's body in pieces - for now, forget about pride your survival is more important. No one would choose to crawl under fences, be beaten until your shadow leaves you, raped, then drowned, forced to the bottom of the boat because you are darker, be sold, starved, shot at the border like a sick animal, be pitied, lose your name, lose your family, make a refugee camp a home for a year or two or ten, stripped and searched, find prison everywhere and if you survive and you are greeted on the other side with go home blacks, refugees dirty immigrants, asylum seekers sucking our country dry of milk, dark, with their hands out smell strange, savage - look what they've done to their own countries, what will they do to ours? Who would choose to spend days and nights in the stomach of a truck unless the miles travelled meant something more than journey. Migrants hang onto flotation tubes in the sea after jumping from an overloaded wooden boat during a rescue operation 16 kilometres off the coast of Libya.

Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth by Warsan Shire