by Jaydaa Ali-Wilkinson

The brown paper bag shook violently in my hands on the subway home from the market. My father sat opposite me, arms folded in his lap. Hold it tight, he told me, so I squeezed the bag until my knuckles paled.

The pigeon’s thrashing quieted to a dull tremble when the train reached home. My worn boots walked the familiar sidewalks of Jane and Finch, one hand suffocating the bag, the other cocooned by my father’s. Rough and calloused with knife scars etched into the palm — a butcher's hand. He led the way.

The butcher pried the crinkled bag from my grasp, the pigeon like a silent weight at the bottom. A breath of wind winnowed into the apartment from where he stood at the balcony door and filtered through pecked holes in the open bag, jerking the bird back to life. But he pinched it still by the neck, where green feathers shifted into violet. I watched, through the glass, as he plucked his cleaver from the knife block.

He frowned and bit his bottom lip where a cigarette would’ve been; he was trying to quit.

I had always known the butcher to revel in the slaughter, like the pigeon vendor in the market, but in the heaviness held by the wrinkle between my father’s brows, that likeness bled into something new.

His scar-flecked fist unfolded like a blooming lily as green and violet faded into wind and white clouds. I eyed my father and resented him a little less.

Jaydaa Ali-Wilkinson’s “Godspeed” received second place in the BCPW’s 2024 Flash Fiction Contest. Jaydaa attends Craig Kielburger Secondary School.