You like seeing me
timid and obedient?
You like seeing me
do as you say?
Like a bird
locked inside a cage
I might be.
But even a bird
has a sharp beak.
Watch me use it,
as I bite your finger off,
when you’re giving orders,
with all that I have,
and fly away,
once and for all.
Prerna Bakshi is a sociolinguist, research scholar, and writer of Indian origin, currently based in Macao. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Linden Avenue Literary Journal, Indiana Voice Journal, Red Fez, Muse India, Postcolonial Text, Theory in Action, Hysteria, Misfit Magazine, Grey Sparrow Journal, Asahi Shimbun, Your One Phone Call | Poetry with a knife edge!, bottle rockets, Kabul Press, Silver Birch Press, Wilderness House Literary Review and elsewhere. She tweets at @bprerna.
A Quiet Courage 