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.

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.

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.

It's not my responsibility to be beautiful. I'm not alive for that purpose. My existence is not about how desirable you find me.

Warsan means "good news" and Shire means "to gather in one place". My parents named me after my father's mother, my grandmother. Growing up, I absolutely wanted a name that was easier to pronounce, more common, prettier. But then I grew up and understood the power of a name, the beauty that comes in understanding how your name has affected who you are.

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.

The ego hurts you like this: you become obsessed with the one person who does not love you. blind to the rest who do.