About Warsan Shire: Warsan Shire is a Somali-British writer, poet, editor and teacher.
No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark.
Sad people have the gift of time, while the world dizzies everyone else; they remain stagnant, their bodies refusing to follow pace with the universe. With these kind of people everything aches for too long, everything moves without rush, wounds are ...
I want to make love, but my hair smells of war and running and running.
It's not my responsibility to be beautiful. I'm not alive for that purpose. My existence is not about how desirable you find me.
You are terrifying and strange and beautiful. Something not everyone knows how to love.
You tried to change didn’t you? Closed your mouth more, tried to be softer, prettier, less volatile, less awake... You can’t make homes out of human beings. Someone should have already told you that.
At the end of the day, it isn’t where I came from. Maybe home is somewhere I’m going and never have been before.
The ego hurts you like this: you become obsessed with the one person who does not love you. blind to the rest who do.
His eyes were the same colour as the sea in a postcard someone sends you when they love you, but not enough to stay.
We took such care of tomorrow, but died on the way there.
later that night i held an atlas in my lap ran my fingers across the whole world and whispered where does it hurt? it answered everywhere everywhere everywhere.
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 ho...
Don't assume, ask. Be kind. Tell the truth. Don't say anything you can't stand behind fully. Have integrity. Tell people how you feel.
With you, intimacy colours my voice. even ‘hello’ sounds like ‘come here'.
Loving you was like going to war; I never came back the same.
all those nights with the phone warming the side of my face like the sun.
Document the moments you feel most in love with yourself - what you’re wearing, who you’re around, what you’re doing. Recreate and repeat.
