Take my hair down from its braids
Take the jewelry from around my neck
Take these bracelets like golden shackles
And take me back to my mother’s house

Take me back to my mother’s house
Where I was happy as a girl
Lay him in the ground facing to the sunset
And I’ll rip my hair the whole way to her door

Break my china, throw my dowry in the river
Rip the curtains from the windows
Strip the floor on which I made my marriage bed
And take me back to my mother’s house

I am an animal, not a girl
With sharp teeth and a spine
I am not fit to eat the scraps of men
I am not fit to be a wife

I have been touched by death
He has run his cold fingers through my hair
He has claimed me as his prize
And he wants to wed me at my mother’s house