by Warsan Shire
The first boy to kiss your mother later raped women
when the war broke out. She remembers hearing this
from your uncle, then going to your bedroom and laying
down on the floor. You were at school.
Your mother was sixteen when he first kissed her.
She held her breath for so long that she blacked out.
On waking she found her dress was wet and sticking
to her stomach, half-moons bitten into her thighs.
That same evening, she visited a friend, a girl
who fermented wine illegally in her bedroom.
When your mother confessed, I’ve never been touched
like that before, the friend laughed, mouth bloody with grapes,
then plunged a hand between your mother’s legs.
Last week, she saw him driving the number eighteen bus,
his cheek a swollen drumlin, a vine scar dragging itself
across his mouth. You were with her, holding a bag
of dates to your chest, heard her let out a deep moan
when she saw how much you looked like him.
Warsan Shire‘s debut collection ‘Bless The Daughter Raised By A Voice In Her Head’ was published by Penguin Random House in 2022. Her first pamphlet, Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth was published by flipped eye publishing in 2011. She won the Inaugural Brunel University African Poetry Prize in 2013 and in 2014 she was appointed as the first Young Poet Laureate for London. She was also selected as Poet in Residence for Queensland, Australia where she collaborated with the Aboriginal Centre for Performing Arts. In 2015 she released a limited edition pamphlet Her Blue Body. In 2016 and 2020 she collaborated with Beyoncé Knowles-Carter on the film adaptation and poetry for the visual album Lemonade and Black Is King. In 2017 she was included as part of the Penguin Modern Poets series alongside Sharon Olds and Malika Booker. She also wrote the short film Brave Girl Rising highlighting the voices and faces of Somali girls in Africa’s largest refugee camp. Her work has been translated and published in dozens of territories around the world.