Quote

Don't assume, ask. Be kind. Tell the truth. Don't say anything you can't stand behind fully. Have integrity. Tell people how you feel.

Warsan Shire

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Warsan Shire
Age: 36
Born: 1988
Born: January 1
Poet
Writer
Republic of Kenya
Anything
Fully
Feel
Integrity
Feels
Behinds
Kind
Behind
People
Stand
Asks
Shire
Tell
Assume
Truth
Assuming

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Light attracts light. But sometimes your light attracts moths and your warmth attracts parasites. Protect your space and energy
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I belong deeply to myself.
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The ego hurts you like this: you become obsessed with the one person who does not love you. blind to the rest who do.
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I tore up and ate my own passport in an airport hotel once. I'm bloated with language I can’t afford to forget.
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Your mouth is a lonely place but I keep coming back.
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My name is indigenous to my country, it is not easy to pronounce, it takes effort to say correctly and I am absolutely in love with the sound of it and its meaning. Also, it's not the kind of name you baby, slip into sweet talk mid sentence, late night phone conversation, whisper into the receiver kind of name, so, of that I am glad.
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Two people who were once very close can without blame or grand betrayal become strangers. Perhaps this is the saddest thing in the world.
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Perhaps, the problem is not the intensity of your love, but the quality of the people you are loving.
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Make peace with your body, it's not manmade, there are no flaws, there are no mistakes.
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Apathy is the same as war, it all kills you, she says. Slow like cancer in the breast or fast like a machete in the neck.
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Give your daughters difficult names. Give your daughters names that command the full use of the tongue. My name makes you want to tell me the truth. My name doesn't allow me to trust anyone that cannot pronounce it right.
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Document the moments you feel most in love with yourself - what you're wearing, who you're around, what you're doing. Recreate and repeat.
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Every mouth you’ve ever kissed was just practice. All the bodies you’ve ever undressed and ploughed in to were preparing you for me. I don’t mind tasting them in the memory of your mouth. Was it a long journey? Did it take you long to find me? You’re here now, welcome home.
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You are terrifying, and strange, and beautiful. Something not everyone knows how to love.
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How far have you walked for men who've never held your feet in their laps?
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I know a few things to be true. 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. My body is burning with the shame of not belonging, my body is longing.
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I have my mother’s mouth and my father’s eyes on my face they are still together.
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I think in Somali, I cuss in Somali, when I'm afraid I reach for somali and this language is very rich, very filling. It's an unflinching language the crudest most terrible things sound perfectly normal in Somali.
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I tend to the wound so often, it never heals.
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At the end of the day, it isn’t where I came from. Maybe home is somewhere I’m going and never have been before.
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