Rose water,
Rose water,
Why did she have a daughter?
Why not another boy?

Flowers blooming in the water
In a pail for the dead.

Strange these flowers,
Like limp hands;
Rubied like
Old drying wounds.

When the blood coagulates
There will be no more rose water
Running over her dead daughter
And escaping in the drain.

Ladies keep their fingers clean
And live to see other days;
Or else Father chops them off
One by one
And pumps the juice.

Juiced the hairy mouths of judges,
Juiced the gadflies on the slab.

Mother, Father
Wash away their daughter.

Tags: alina zaria, poetry