For women who are "difficult" to love

Leggy has been posting little quotes and excerpts from the poetry of Warsan Shire and I have been liking what I read. I looked her up and she is a 23 year old Kenyan born Somali Brit woman. I think her name is cool and she seems like an interesting person. I say this because, for one pictures of her show her in hijabs or her hair covered, then there are the other set of pics that have a huge hoop between her nostrils.

Interesting quote and excerpt from an interview:

I am a lover without a lover. I am lovely and lonely and I belong deeply to myself.


HL: Who taught you most about love?
WS: I think it was probably my parents.They taught me more about the absence of love. They taught me about love through the loss of it…
HL: Can you explain a little more?
WS: For a long while, I was obsessed about the breakdown of my parents’ marriage. Because I admired both of them so much separately, I couldn’t understand or make sense of how it couldn’t work. And as I grew up, the more I learned and the more I realized that sometimes it just doesn’t work out. The more I saw them as human beings and as people who have feelings and have memories, secrets and all the rest of it, I definitely made peace with it.  I learned what I want from what I don’t want.

The title of my blogpost is from a poem of hers below:

you are a horse running alone
and he tries to tame you
compares you to an impossible highway
to a burning house
says you are blinding him
that he could never leave you
forget you
want anything but you
you dizzy him, you are unbearable
every woman before or after you
is doused in your name
you fill his mouth

his teeth ache with memory of taste
his body just a long shadow seeking yours
but you are always too intense
frightening in the way you want him
unashamed and sacrificial 
he tells you that no man can live up to the one who 
lives in your head
and you tried to change didn’t you?
closed your mouth more
tried to be softer
prettier
less volatile, less awake

but even when sleeping you could feel 
him travelling away from you in his dreams
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
and if he wants to leave
then let him leave
you are terrifying
and strange and beautiful
something not everyone knows how to love.

Comments

neuyogi said…
Needless to say I love this and will be looking her and her work up.
Nutty J. said…
This is on point.... The poem is a lovely and accurate piece of what truly is most times
Molara Brown said…
Post on point...sometimes it just never works.
Etoile Oye said…
Ohh... love the poem. Off to stalk her now.

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