"The House" is a poem by Warsan Shire. It was published in 2011 in Shire's first poetry collection, Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth. It focuses on womanhood, comparing a woman's body to a house equipped with different rooms that serve different purposes, such as a "kitchen of lust" and the "bedroom of grief."
The poem contains references to sexual abuse, and unflinchingly confronts the violations that the female body can and has historically experienced, winding them into the metaphorical. It also refers to love and the physical experience of love, as well as the imprints love leaves behind.
