It is a Friday night
filled with fun and their frisky friends
but she is sitting beside
her mother just replanted a new jasmine plant, the old one’s dead roots
the new jasmines are sweet smelling, but they’re ugly to her

It is a Friday night
vibrations of loud music and their throbbing parties
but she is cooking dinner
scraps of chapatti and small plastic bowls of biryani
cooked in crackling broken pot, to the tune of her mother’s complaints

It is a Friday night
it is dark and raining hot drops of their romantic lovers, wet in the streets
but she is without her own
it’s against her beliefs, passed down from her mother
and her mother’s mother, plopped into her confused head

It is a Friday night
everyone is going home, laughing and full of life
but she is alone, sitting in her cold room of ice
making own rain and sobbing her own sounds
they plucked herself out, and planted themselves

It is a Saturday night
they put a sari and put her hair in a braid
“Such a good girl!” they say
they nod and smile, they think it’s her
they plucked herself out, and planted themselves

This is for my LEAP English Poetry Reciting! I’m excited. I have to perform this in front of my class!