WE

By Ramsha Ashraf

we were the daughters

of the witches

who could set fire to skeletons

of the ones who wanted

to crush

the petals of our flowering youth

to get their hands fragrant.

we played this 'fire-game'

but not all the time,

we had our moments

of transcendence too,

we also had licked

the sweat of the men,

who could brew us coca beans

who could feed us bread,

we also had our territories

of peace,

with our men in our land

of significance,

we were not witches

but the daughters

of the ones who once had gotten

bewitched

not because they wanted to,

but they were asked to

unlike our mothers we knew

the meanings

of tenderness and love-pecks,

we could let our lovers

use their bones

on our paper-flesh as pens,

we could sip the stories from their lips

but we also knew, where and when,

to leave them deserted

with their strangled isolation

haunting their no-more-lovely faces

we were the daughters of the witches

they forgot to burn

in the wombs of their mothers.

#darkpoetsclub