![]() Like most poems, “” is best read aloud. There’s audio floating around online of the poet, Warsan Shire,, as if she recorded it in a shared space and didn’t want the person in the next room to overhear. It makes it intimate. I revisit the audio every once in awhile, and each time I get the feeling that she’s speaking to me directly, giving me advice, perhaps a warning: 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 In what seems like a deeply personal poem, Shire recounts a failed relationship in the second person. She tells us about the man who couldn’t love her, who compared her to endless cumbersome objects: highways, horses, anything but a woman. Her intensity frightened him and so she tried being “softer,” “less volatile,” tried to fit into the image of the woman he was searching for. Starting off a scholarship essay. Love For Sale MovieThat part of the poem by itself is relatable: Having someone tell you that your feelings are holding you back—from working, thinking straight, being responsible, making a good argument, being worthy of love—is one of the greatest pains of being a woman. So you tweak yourself in the most miniscule ways possible in order to seem less demanding and less passionate. You speak more quietly. Introducing a puppy to an older dog. You smile more. You soften your requests with words like “just” and “only.” You take up as little space as possible. When I first heard the poem at 21 years old, I was just becoming familiar with that pain—still figuring out that a woman like me, teeming with emotion, is often not well received. When I listened to Shire speak to me through tinny plastic headphones as I sat in bed, awake in the middle of the night in the room I grew up in, a novel idea came to me: What if it isn’t me that’s failing at love?
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