I cry as I walk under the relentless Toronto sun. I need to buy some tobacco- I had finally quit smoking 4 months ago at 39 years of age- but lifestyle changes tend to go out the window when your country is being decimated live on television 24 hours a day. Is this the cycle of life everyone has been talking about all this time? The days in between gut-wrenching trauma and insignificant lifestyle choices?

I ponder this life and cry. I’ve been doing a lot of that this past year. I wipe my face because a lady just shielded her child’s eyes and stared at me, horrified. My pain and grief have finally manifested in my physical body. I touch my own arms and knees to make sure my body is still whole. I have been having what can only be called an out of body experience for the past 3 days; I feel like I am staring at my avatar as she goes through the tasks of the day, and I do not always recognize her.

I am become a mirror image of my land thousands of miles away; torn, limbless and in ruins.

I notice something in the distance and as I get closer, I see it is a dead rat. It looks like it had just exploded moments ago, its guts spilling out of its tiny body. Flies and bees gnaw at its flesh frantically. It dawns on me, right then and there: I am the rat.

This is how the West sees me and all who resemble me; filthy and inconsequential. A good rat is a dead rat.

I kneel on the sidewalk and mourn the dead rat, the good rat who had a family and hopes and worries and aspirations of moving to Canada to live a life of safety and of a foreign tongue.

If only you knew, dead rat, you will never be safe anywhere in this dark and ugly world.