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“HOME

no one leaves home unless
home is the mouth of a shark
you only run for the border
when you see the whole city running as well

your neighbors running faster than you
breath bloody in their throats
the boy you went to school with
who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory
is holding a gun bigger than his body
you only leave home
when home won’t let you stay.

no one leaves home unless home chases you
fire under feet
hot blood in your belly
it’s not something you ever thought of doing
until the blade burnt threats into
your neck
and even then you carried the anthem under
your breath
only tearing up your passport in an airport toilets
sobbing as each mouthful of paper
made it clear that you wouldn’t be going back.

you have to understand,
that no one puts their children in a boat
unless the water is safer than the land
no one burns their palms
under trains
beneath carriages
no one spends days and nights in the stomach of a truck
feeding on newspaper unless the miles travelled
means something more than journey.
no one crawls under fences
no one wants to be beaten
pitied

no one chooses refugee camps
or strip searches where your
body is left aching
or prison,
because prison is safer
than a city of fire
and one prison guard
in the night
is better than a truckload
of men who look like your father
no one could take it
no one could stomach it
no one skin would be tough enough

the
go home blacks
refugees
dirty immigrants
asylum seekers
sucking our country dry
niggers with their hands out
they smell strange
savage
messed up their country and now they want
to mess ours up
how do the words
the dirty looks
roll off your backs
maybe because the blow is softer
than a limb torn off

or the words are more tender
than fourteen men between
your legs
or the insults are easier
to swallow
than rubble
than bone
than your child body
in pieces.
i want to go home,
but home is the mouth of a shark
home is the barrel of the gun
and no one would leave home
unless home chased you to the shore
unless home told you
to quicken your legs
leave your clothes behind
crawl through the desert
wade through the oceans
drown
save
be hunger
beg
forget pride
your survival is more important

no one leaves home until home is a sweaty voice in your ear
saying-
leave,
run away from me now
i dont know what i’ve become
but i know that anywhere
is safer than here”
― Warsan Shire

“We all flee in hope of finding some ground of security”
― M.T. Anderson, The Kingdom on the Waves

“The one who merely flees is not yet free. In fleeing he is still conditioned by that from which he flees.”
― Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Outline & Critical Writings

“To want to run away is an essence of being human, it transforms any staying through the transfigurations of choice. To think about fleeing from circumstances, from a marriage, a relationship or from a work is part of the conversation itself and helps us understand the true distilled nature of our own reluctance. Strangely, we are perhaps most fully incarnated as humans, when part of us does not want to be here, or doesn’t know how to be here. Presence is only fully understood and realized through fully understanding our reluctance to show up. To understand the part of us that wants nothing to do with the full necessities of work, of relationship, of loss, of doing what is necessary, is to learn humility, to cultivate self-compassion and to sharpen that sense of humor essential to a merciful perspective of both a self and another.”
― David Whyte, Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words

“All night I flee from someone. I lead the chase, I lead the fugue. I sing a song of mourning. Black birds over black shrouds. My brain cries.”
― Alejandra Pizarnik, The Galloping Hour: French Poems

“Her arms groped forward to guide her when her tears blocked her vision in darkness. Then she couldn't run any more. She sank to her knees and began to cry in her terror. She wanted Gary.
She suddenly felt strong arms around her. She bent her head to bury it in Gary's shoulder, trembling in the darkness.
Whimpering like a small animal in a trap, she pushed herself closer to him and said in a choked voice, "I'm so frightened!"
"I know, my love," the voice said. "I'm so sorry you were hurt."
She felt herself being pulled up to him, his grip around her tight. It was a strange feeling in this pitch-black hallway, where not even the light of the moon cast any illumination. The lips she touched were cold and yet they responded to her with an unusual warmth. His hands massaged her back. Something, Melanie thought, was wrong with that. The hands were too smooth, not like a plastered wrist would feel.
"Gary?" she asked, backing away. She didn't trust what she couldn't see.
"My love," the voice whispered, "there is no need to fear now. I shall protect you from those who mean you harm.”
― Clare McNally, Ghost House

“If I’m perplexed by the fact that I’m constantly lost, maybe somewhere in my head I’ve determined that being lost serves a greater purpose than being found.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“If you are made for flight, intended for it,
you had better find a pursuer, fast.
Otherwise, all that fleeing is going nowhere.”
― Dan Chiasson

“I reminded him of the poverty and hardships he must encounter among strangers. I told him he might be caught and brought back; and that was terrible to think of.

He grew vexed, and asked if poverty and hardships with freedom, were not preferable to our treatment in slavery. "Linda," he continued, "we are dogs here; foot-balls, cattle, every thing that's mean. No, I will not stay. Let them bring me back. We don't die but once.”
― Harriet Ann Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

“I’m officially giving myself permission to ask; What are Mr. Garcia’s intentions? Maybe I’m late to the game on this question. The thing is, I’ve seen myself in the mirror. Why would I suspect anyone of wanting this?”
― Michael Benzehabe, Zonked Out: The Teen Psychologist of San Marcos Who Killed Her Santa Claus and Found the Blue-Black Edge of the Love Universe

“Wer davonläuft kann später kämpfen.”
― Menander

“Darkness is the absence of light. Therefore, darkness is always fleeing from where light is and scurrying off to where it is not. So why am I running from something that’s always running from something?”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“En des temps comme ceux-ci, la fuite est le seul moyen pour se maintenir vifs et continuer à rêver.”
― Henri Laborit

“Denial is the escape that never allows us to escape.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“Fleeing is part of the struggle.”
― Manu Larcenet, Ordinary Victories

“If we don’t know what we’re running from or what we’re running to, maybe all of the running is our effort to avoid both.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“Running from God creates the illusion that I’m actually creating space between myself and that from which I’m running. And I’m not certain that I want to run with that illusion.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“Any place that I ‘run toâ€� most often turns into a place that I have to ‘run fromâ€�, unless of course that place is God.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“Running away from uncertainty and confusion but most of all running away from myself. I thought I might become someone else in time, grafted on to something better and stronger. And then I saw that the running away was a running towards. An effort to catch up with my fleet-footed self, living another life in a different way.”
― Jeanette Winterson, Sexing the Cherry

“We are all on a journey. But if it’s not the journey to which we were called, we’ve confused a journey with a panicked retreat.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“Why did I ever leave them, what was I fleeing from? What spoilt scene that I could not then endure?”
― Iris Murdoch, The Nice and the Good

“I have never been among those who think that it is better to be dead than to leave Rome. In fact, I have fled Rome many times in order to preserve my life.”
― John Maddox Roberts, The Temple of the Muses

“The ancient sapien instinct: love is an approximation to danger.
You make me feel safe, so I want to run away.”
― Jireh Deng

“Whenever I’ve ‘jumped ship,â€� I rarely ever land in the water. Rather, I tend to land on another ship that’s in just about as much trouble as the one I just jumped off of.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“Truth is the thing that lies spend their lives running from.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“It would behoove me to realize that I can’t build a stronghold of any kind. Rather, I can only find one. And unless the stronghold that I find is God, everything that I fear will have a ‘strong holdâ€� on me.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“And to expend what little energy we have ‘runningâ€� from this reality rather than running ‘toâ€� it is to weary ourselves all the more.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“Too many of us spend our lives incessantly running only to find ourselves completely lost because our running was driven by fear and not inspired by a destination.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“Whatever place to which you may be fleeing, God was never not there waiting for you”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“One way of grounding how we should identify refugees in a changing world is through the concept of force majeure - the absence of a reasonable choice but to leave. More specifically, the threshold for refuge would be: fear of serious physical harm. And the test would be: when would a reasonable person not see her- or himself as having a choice but to flee? In other words, if you were in the same situation, what would you do?”
― Alexander Betts, Refuge: Transforming a Broken Refugee System