The Bird Flies Away because It Cannot Stand

straight birds crumble
from smoke that patterns
the sky after wildfires 
& I think of Ibrahim      
when he smote statues
into feathers & dust    
fragmented under sharp
metal & his father 
menaced him with stoning
& I wonder what it takes    
to truss up your son
& serve him on a platter,
skin white under rope,        
knuckles reddened, 
blood opening like a petal,
clotting over flexor & sinew,
veins eschewing purple
for black & was he expecting to watch
as fire papered skin, engulfed
the whites of eyes like seawater
surging over a rock, 
to stand still as ash dribbled
off the logs like pan drippings,
& what does it take for your village
to turn over your leaf body
& gape you into a chasm,
spill you over & wait for flame
to inhale you into its gills
& what does it take
to look into the face of the father
who threatened to kill you
& say,
peace be upon you

---

Ayesha Asad is from Dallas, Texas. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in PANK, Cosmonauts Avenue, Sundog Lit, DIAGRAM, Reunion: The Dallas Review, Menacing Hedge, Qu Literary Magazine, and elsewhere. Her writing has been recognized by Creative Writing Ink Journal and the Robert Bone Memorial Creative Writing Prize. She studies literature and biology at the University of Texas at Dallas. In her free time, she likes to dream. She was born in 2001.

Art: Texture of Water in the Ocean via Public Domain