Life Tastes of Pepper
S. Rouzbeh
2026-10-03

A poem of protest and mourning for young lives lost, bereaved mothers and wounds deepened by denial. Amid tears and grief, hope remains alive: a flower can be torn apart, but spring cannot be killed.

Life Tastes of Pepper

For so long now
life
on our tongues
has tasted of pepper;
it is bitter
and it burns.

You
plucked our young
before
their season of ripening,

and still
into our mothers' wounds
you scatter pepper
and ask:
‘What wounds?’

Did you not see the tears
upon their cheeks?

Or did you see,
yet the smiles
upon your lips
never turned to stone?

You said:
it was not there,
it did not happen,
we saw nothing…

But the image remains;
clearer than your denial,
as though
the sky
itself
had painted
on the wall of night
that image.

Go
and see the graves:

beautiful flowers,
on severed stems,
flowers torn apart
on the earth above the young
who still
carry the scent of life.

How sorrowfully beautiful it is there;
a place where
tears and smiles,
dancing and mourning,
memory and death
are woven together.

A mother
at her child's grave
lays down flowers,

a friend laughs
so that their tears
will not be seen,

and someone young
beside a cold stone
dances softly;

as though death
had been unable
to bring life
to an end.

For what sin
did you pluck these flowers?

You
who mistook the scythe
for
justice,

did you never read
the fate of the executioners
who came before you?

History
is not a closed book;
it is a mirror
that sooner or later
before every bloodstained hand
is held.

On that day
there will be
no time left for denial.

Time
does not always knock;
sometimes
it simply passes
and closes the door
behind
it.

And we
on the other side of the mirror
will stand,

not for revenge,
but to see the day
when everyone
must answer
for what
they have sown.

A flower
can be torn apart,

but spring
cannot be killed.

Source: https://srouzbeh.com/en/posts/entry-1791036763443-8ceb8236
Please credit the author and link to this edition.