Shaylin Jones-Silva

“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. I am the sin of memory and the absence of memory. I watch the news and my mouth becomes a sink full of blood. The lines, the forms, the people at the desks, the calling cards, the immigration officers, the looks on the street, the cold settling deep into my bones, the English classes at night, the distance I am from home. 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.”
― Warsan Shire, Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth

“Grandfather’s Hands
 
 
 
 
 
 
Your grandfather’s hands were brown.
Your grandmother kissed each knuckle,
 
circled an island into his palm
and told him which parts they would share,
which part they would leave alone.
 
She wet a finger to draw where the ocean would be
on his wrist, kissed him there,
named the ocean after herself.
 
Your grandfather’s hands were slow but urgent.
Your grandmother dreamt them,
 
a clockwork of fingers finding places to own–
under the tongue, collarbone, bottom lip,
arch of foot.
 
Your grandmother names his fingers after seasons–
index finger, a wave of heat,
middle finger, rainfall.
 
Some nights his thumb is the moon
nestled just under her rib.

“Your grandparents often found themselves
in dark rooms, mapping out
each other’s bodies,
 
claiming whole countries
with their mouths.”
― Warsan Shire, Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth

“The sun is perfect and you woke this morning. You have enough language in your mouth to be understood. You have a name, and someone wants to call it. Five fingers on your hand and someone wants to hold it. If we just start there, every beautiful thing that has and will ever exist is possible. If we start there, everything, for a moment, is right in the world.”
― Warsan Shire

“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.”
― Warsan Shire