Quote by Warsan Shire: “No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark.”

People don't abandon their homes, families, and communities for the thrill of it. When someone becomes a refugee or migrant, they are fleeing something intolerable. This line asks the reader to extend empathy rather than suspicion — to understand that leaving required surviving something almost unimaginable.

Shire wrote this in her 2011 poem 'Home', during a period of intense global refugee crises — including displacement from the Horn of Africa following conflict and famine, and from the Arab Spring's aftermath. The poem was widely shared online as Europe's migration debates intensified throughout the early 2010s.

British-Somali poet who became the first Young Poet Laureate for London in 2013. Her poetry, rooted in the Somali diaspora experience, gained global recognition through her collaboration with Beyoncé on the visual album Lemonade in 2016.