84 Quotes by Warsan Shire

I want to lay down, but these countries are like uncles who touch you when you're young and asleep. Look at all these borders foaming at the mouth with bodies broken and desperate...I spent days and nights in the stomach of the truck; I did not come out the same. Sometimes it feels like someone else is wearing my body.

No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark

I wear my loneliness like a taffeta dress riding up my thigh,and you cannot help but want me.You think it's cruelhow I break your heart, to write a poem.I think it's alchemy.

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.

My body is burning with the shame of not belonging, […]

Her body is one long sigh.

[…] in dark rooms, mapping outeach other’s bodies,claiming whole countrieswith their mouths.

I did not beg him to staybecause I was begging Godthat he would not leave.

[…] a clockwork of fingers finding places to own—under the tongue, collarbone, bottom lip,arch of foot.