Charmaine Arjoonlal

Catharsis 

When my husband’s forty-something-year-old
mother saw a chiropractor for the first time,
she cried for three days.

As a child, she had been incarcerated in
a concentration camp in Indonesia. 

Transracially adopted, I weep every time
my birth mother calls me my darling.

Charmaine Arjoonlal is a writer and social worker who lives with her husband and two spoiled dogs in Whitehorse, Yukon, Canada. Her writing has appeared in Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Last Stanza Poetry Journal, Pinhole Poetry, Field Guide Poetry Magazine and elsewhere. You can find Charmaine on x/twitter @arjoonlal on Instagram @charmainearjoonlal or visit her website charmainearjoonlal.wordpress.com