Inuktitut Magazine - Issue 133/134

Finding Home

Who am I

Moving mountains for a living caused this obligation to aggressively push forward

Today I stopped

Saving a family of spiders journeying across the mossy ground

Smelling Labrador tea flowers to unearth a great delight

their smell lingers, a welcomed visitor on my skin

With the sun blanketing my body I imagine you

you are the mild windy days that I dance around from sunrise and coloured skies to nightfall and silence

I am the solid ground blanketed with fresh snow waiting for your warm embrace

It can feel like an ebb and flow

To sit in contentment as the tide blankets my body and live in delicious curiosity as the receding waters expose wondrous treasures beneath

I began this journey of viewing myself as an ocean

I watch as this tremendous river of my affections began to freeze over

Ice-filled edges

Creeping inwards

I mourned the warm wetness of fresh flowing love

Discovering in grief, a bridge crossed with trust to new lands yet seen

the cold frozen river will flow once more

digesting silence on the snow-covered hills

I understand that I am human

With the ability to communicate with words and a voice to be heard

But there are days were my spirit feels like a Tulugak and days where I feel treated as such

An unkindness

Dark and perspective

Mimicking to blend in

Scavenging for survival

Overlooked and underestimated

Seemingly useless

If only I could

Fly

Fly

Fly

I so crave to flow directionless through the Arctic air

To witness cracks emerging in the frozen river once more

Author: Ashley Qilavaq-Savard