Chamomile Tea/miscarried baby* by Fizza Abbas (Pakistan, 29)

Trigger Warning: Blood and gore depiction

Ingredients/parts

• Honey/Bitter colostrum
• Apple slices - 2/blood spots - my heart!
• Boiled water - 2 cups/dry fluid - my child!
• Chamomile flowers - 2 tbsps/wilting rose - traces of red

Directions
​
Take out all the ingredients and place them on your counter./I'm lying naked in a labour room.
Soak the flowers with cold water./Waiting for my flower to be soaked. Add hot, boiling water to
the teapot./I tell them water's boiling, baby, alive. Add apple slices into the pot and chop them
with a wooden spoon./They remove my silverskin from ribs. Whisk in the chamomile flowers
and 2 cups of boiling water./I can't see anymore, my ba-, do-, ple, ali VVVEEE, pls. Let it steep
for 2-3 minutes./They say it's my new life. Pour the tea into two cups and enjoy it with
honey./Little do they know, it's the first living funeral of the dead

Fizza Abbas is a writer based in Karachi, Pakistan. She is fond of poetry and music. Her work has appeared in more than 90 journals, both online and in print. Her work has also been nominated for Best of The Net and shortlisted for Oxford Brookes International Poetry Competition 2021.  She tweets @fizzawrites.