UGLY
a poem by Warsan Shire
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.
She reminded them of the war.
On her fifteenth birthday you taught her
how to tie her hair like rope
and smoke it over burning frankincense.
You made her gargle rosewater
and while she coughed, said
girls like you shouldn't smell
of lonely or empty.
You are her mother.
Why did you not warn her,
hold her like a rotting boat
and tell her that men will not love her
if she is covered in continents,
if her teeth are small colonies,
if her stomach is an island,
if her thighs are borders?
What man wants to lie down
and watch the world burn
in his bedroom?
You daughter's face is a small riot,
her hands are a civil war,
a refugee camp behind each ear,
a body littered with ugly things.
But God,
doesn't she wear
the world well?
