The Unbearable Weight of Staying Poem Text

The Unbearable Weight of Staying Poem Text

The Unbearable Weight of Staying (Excerpt)

I don’t know when love became elusive
What I know, is that no one I know has it.

My father's arms around my mother's neck,
Fruit too ripe to eat, a door half way open.
When your name is a just a hand I can never hold,
everything I have ever believed in, becomes magic.

I think of lovers as trees, growing to and
from one another, searching for the same light.
My mother's laughter in a dark room,
a photograph greying under my touch.

. . .

- Warsan Shire

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