Thirty Percent

20 September 2026

The forecast gives it seventyand my mother brings the washing in.I say: there's a thirty.She says: someone has to be the thirty.

She has been the thirty before.She has the passport to prove it,the language she kept, the daughterstanding in a kitchen that existsarguing with her about percentages.

About free versePoetry without a set rhyme scheme or regular meter, shaped by the poet.

Free verse has no fixed rhyme scheme or regular meter, so there is no rule to check it against. That does not mean it lacks craft. The poet chooses where lines break, how long they run, and what repeats, and those choices shape it.

Listen for Where each line ends, and how that break changes the way you hear it.

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Nadia Osei

@nadia

Two languages, one notebook. Trusts the shorter poem.

11 poems · 9 readings received · 11 written · 2 followers

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Readings (1)

Mara Okonkwo20 September 2026

"Someone has to be the thirty" is a whole argument about optimism delivered as a shrug, which is the only way that argument ever survives contact with a daughter. The closing lines are doing a lot of lifting though — passport, language, daughter, kitchen, percentages — and the list flattens what the mother's one line had already made sharp. I'd end on the kitchen that exists and let the reader do the arithmetic.

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More by Nadia Osei

07Studio Portrait, Accra, 1974“In the photograph my mother is nineteen”“In the photograph my mother is nineteen”Studio Portrait, Accra, 19741 reading 08Small Inheritance“Her keys still turn the lock, though she does not.”“Her keys still turn the lock, though she does not.”Small InheritanceQuick read 09Two Words for Rain“My mother's language has two words for rain —”“My mother's language has two words for rain —”Two Words for Rain2 readings

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