the hours
The first hour, she takes the pine needles out of her hair and lines them on their backs. This is interesting because in doing so, she is personifying the pine needles because there is no side to them considered the "back." A possibility for this could be her desire to nurture after being so violently treated, or a mindless action to keep up with her thoughts.
The second hour consisted of weeping - the line "who knew girl could become beast" is incredibly powerful with a couple different layers. First, girl becoming beast can reflect gaining masculine qualities, and monstrous figures are associated with perpetrators - so that in context of her being a victim contains a level of irony. Also, "beast" represents just how much fear, hatred, and violation she feels in that moment.
During the third hour she "finds bits of him on bits of me", which leads into the physical descriptions she writes afterwards - bite marks and smells and blood. This sensory work causes discomfort in the reader which evokes feelings of sympathy towards the victim and disgust towards the perpetrator.
By ending with "the fourth hour i prayed", Kaur brings back a slightly poetic feeling, but in the context of trauma and feelings of violation.
