by Moni Brar
(Content warnings: abuse, death)
I was a dark silence once.
Now, I am a small slip
of light
or a sharp-sided hurricane.
I learned the word escape
too young,
the word freedom
too late.
My claws scrape birch bone.
I fish out his eyes,
fill the sockets
with bark dust.
The deep trees hide
his beastly matter.
His body an empty vessel
I fill and fill
Born in India, MONI BRAR now lives on territories of the Treaty 7 region and Syilx Okanagan Nation. Her writing explores the interrelation of time, place and identity in the immigrant experience, diasporic guilt, and colonization. She believes art contains the possibility of healing. Her work appeared in PRISM, Passages North, Hobart, Existere, and others.
goodbye to father and forest can be found in Augur Magazine Issue 4.1.
