The lines, the forms, the people at the desks, the calling cards, the immigration officer, the looks on the street, the cold settling deep into my bones, the English classes at night, the distance I am from home. I watch the news and my mouth becomes a sink full of blood. I am the sin of memory and the absence of memory. ![]() My body is burning with the shame of not belonging, my body is longing. 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. Sometimes it feels like someone else is wearing my body. I spent days and nights in the stomach of the truck, I did not come out the same. I’m the colour of hot sun on my face, my mother’s remains were never buried. Look at all these borders, foaming at the mouth with bodies broken and desperate. I want to lay down, but these countries are like uncles who touch you when you’re young and asleep. I want to make love but my hair smells of war and running and running. I thought the sea was safer than the land. I hope the journey meant more than miles because all of my children are in the water. ![]() They ask me how did you get here? Can’t you see it on my body? The Libyan desert red with immigrant bodies, the Gulf of Aden bloated, the city of Rome with no jacket. I’m bloated with language I can’t afford to forget. ![]() I tore up and ate my own passport in an airport hotel. I know a shame that shrouds, totally engulfs. I’ve been carrying the old anthem in my mouth for so long that there’s no space for another song, another tongue or another language. No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark. God, do you know how difficult it is, to talk about the day your own city dragged you by the hair, past the old prison, past the school gates, past the burning torsos erected on poles like flags? When I meet others like me I recognise the longing, the missing, the memory of ash on their faces. Well, I think home spat me out, the blackouts and curfews like tongue against loose tooth.
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