Poem of the Week

Ladan Osman was born in Somalia and raised in Columbus, Ohio. She earned a BA from Otterbein University and an MFA from the University of Texas at Austin’s Michener Center for Writers. In 2014 her poetry collection The Kitchen Dweller’s Testimomy won the annual Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets. Osman lives in Chicago.

Water

by Ladan Osman

I came to you carrying water. I came to you

carrying silted water from a well,
muddied water carried in a bucket with a split lip.
My water tasted salty, and like the earth, and so
like blood, and I brought as much as I could carry
in a bucket that drooled tiny streams of water
on my mud-ashen legs.
Want to read the rest?
Please login.
New to Narrative? sign up.
It's easy and free.
The password field is case sensitive. Account & Password Help.
Joining Narrative gives you FREE access to thousands of stories, poems and essays. It’s easy:
PLEASE ENTER A VALID EMAIL ADDRESS.
PLEASE NOTE: We are discontinuing our support of Microsoft-related addresses, including msn.com, live.com, outlook.com, and hotmail.com, and we ask that you use an alternative address, such as gmail.com, yahoo.com, fastmail.com, comcast.net, verizon.com, icloud.com, or other.

We have found Microsoft-related email addresses to be sometimes inconsistent in terms of delivering messages, and we want to make sure that you can access your account and reliably receive messages that you have requested.
Email Preferences
Email Preferences