![]() No one spends days and nights in the cold bladder of a truckįeeding on newspaper unless the miles travelled That no one would put their children in a boat Made it clear that you would not be going back. Only tearing up your passport in airport toilets No one leaves home unless home chases youĪnd even then you carried the anthem under Who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory When you see the whole city running as well ![]() However, its theme of migration and identity got me thinking about one of my favourite poems – Home by Warsan Shire. I’ll see you on the other side.I’m currently reading David Mogo Godhunter by Suyi Davies Okungbowa. All I can say is, I was once like you, the apathy, the pity, the ungrateful placement and now my home is the mouth of a shark, now my home is the barrel of a gun. Are they really this arrogant? Do they not know that stability is like a lover with a sweet mouth upon your body one second and the next you are a tremor lying on the floor covered in rubble and old currency waiting for its return. I hear them say, go home, I hear them say, fucking immigrants, fucking refugees. But Alhamdulilah all of this is better than the scent of a woman completely on fire, or a truckload of men who look like my father, pulling out my teeth and nails, or fourteen men between my legs, or a gun, or a promise, or a lie, or his name, or his manhood in my mouth. The lines, the forms, the people at the desks, the calling cards, the immigration officer, the looks on the street, the cold settling deep into my bones, the English classes at night, the distance I am from home. I watch the news and my mouth becomes a sink full of blood. I am the sin of memory and the absence of memory. My body is burning with the shame of not belonging, my body is longing. I do not know where I am going, where I have come from is disappearing, I am unwelcome and my beauty is not beauty here. Sometimes it feels like someone else is wearing my body. I spent days and nights in the stomach of the truck, I did not come out the same. I’m the colour of hot sun on my face, my mother’s remains were never buried. Look at all these borders, foaming at the mouth with bodies broken and desperate. I want to lay down, but these countries are like uncles who touch you when you’re young and asleep. I want to make love but my hair smells of war and running and running. I thought the sea was safer than the land. I hope the journey meant more than miles because all of my children are in the water. ![]() They ask me how did you get here? Can’t you see it on my body? The Libyan desert red with immigrant bodies, the Gulf of Aden bloated, the city of Rome with no jacket. I’m bloated with language I can’t afford to forget. I tore up and ate my own passport in an airport hotel. I know a shame that shrouds, totally engulfs. I’ve been carrying the old anthem in my mouth for so long that there’s no space for another song, another tongue or another language. No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark. God, do you know how difficult it is, to talk about the day your own city dragged you by the hair, past the old prison, past the school gates, past the burning torsos erected on poles like flags? When I meet others like me I recognise the longing, the missing, the memory of ash on their faces. Well, I think home spat me out, the blackouts and curfews like tongue against loose tooth.
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