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warsan shire is a kenyan-born somali writer, poet, editor, and teacher.  you may know her as the woman whose poetry was adapted into beyonce’s visual album, lemonade.   i am using snippets of her poetry EP “warsan vs melancholy (the seven stages of grief)” which can be found here (the link redirects to a bandcamp page).  last time on our poetry sentence meme series, we used warsan shire’s poem “34 excuses for why we failed at love” which you can find here.  

feel free to change pronouns, punctuation, words, etc., as needed to make these prompts make sense—and please be sure to look up her work if you think it sounds as divine as i do!!!   –  LIZZY

the unbearable weight of staying (the end of the relationship)

❛ i don’t know when love became elusive. what i know, is that no one i know has it. ❜

❛ i think of lovers as trees, growing to and from one another, searching for the same light. ❜

❛ this is all i know how to do: carry loss around until i begin to resemble every bad memory, every terrible fear, every nightmare anyone has ever had. ❜

❛ did you ever love me? ❜

❛ of course, of course. ❜

❛ are you made of steel?  are you made of iron? ❜

❛ i need someone who knows how to stay. ❜

dear moon (the distraction)

❛ you cold, unimaginable thing. ❜ 

how to wear your mothers lipstick (the desperation)

❛ your mother is a woman and women like her cannot be contained. ❜

❛ you look nothing like your mother. ❜

❛ you look everything like your mother. ❜

❛ i thought i told you to stop calling me. ❜

❛ you taste like years of being alone. ❜

questions for the woman i was last night (the honest conversation)

❛ how far have you walked for men who’ve never held your feet in their laps? ❜

❛ how often have you bartered with bone, only to sell yourself short? ❜

❛ why do you find the unavailable so alluring? ❜

❛ where did it begin? what went wrong? ❜

❛ who made you feel so worthless? ❜

❛ if they wanted you, wouldn’t they have chosen you? ❜

❛ all this time, you were begging for love silently, thinking they couldn’t hear you, but they smelt it on you. you must have known they could taste the desperate on your skin. ❜

❛ and what about the others? that would do everything for you? ❜

❛ why did you make them love you until you could not stand it? ❜

❛ how are you both these women, both flighty and needful? ❜

❛ where did you learn this, to want what does not want you? ❜

❛ where did you learn this, to leave those that want to stay? ❜

i think i know what we did wrong (the realization)

❛ we loved like two people who did not know god. ❜

❛ what a shame. ❜

for women who are difficult to love (the affirmation)

❛ i could never leave you, forget you, want anything but you. ❜

❛ you dizzy me; you are unbearable. ❜

❛ every woman before or after you is doused in your name. ❜

❛ you fill my mouth. my teeth ache with the memory of taste. ❜

❛ my body is just a long shadow seeking yours. ❜

❛ you are always too intense, frightening in the way that you want me. ❜

❛ no man can live up to the one who lives in your head. ❜

❛ so what did you want to do, love? split his head open? ❜

❛ you can’t make homes out of human beings. someone should have already told you that. ❜

❛ if he wants to leave, then let him leave. ❜

❛ you are terrifying and strange and beautiful. something not everyone knows how to love. ❜

(the prayer)