Spitting Image

When Eedo Laki saw me for the first time, her mouth robbed me of my name and replaced it with my father’s. The Arabic sat sweet between her tongue and teeth. She addressed me with glee and haunt fencing in the nucleus of her eyes.

Wails filled the humid air. Nameless faces that looked like my own approached the girl whose belly hung full, who fashioned half-broken spectacles that dangled on her nose like frankincense farmers on mountain tops.

Abo said he’d never return home but today my face became a vessel. I became a poem. Transcended colonial border lines. Spoke a language with all the wrong grammar.

But sorry and thank you sounds the same in every tongue. I’m rectifying relationships lost in communication, connecting those stood above and those sleeping below the soil.

About the poet

Fahima Hersi is a young British-Somali who resides in East London. Her poetry typically focuses on her struggles with reconciling her Somali culture with her British background. She talks a lot about the women in her family, as they truly embody the traditional Somali woman. She juxtapose this with herself, as she’s adopted English and British customs whilst living in the UK.