The air smells like rubber and rain.
I sat a long time smelling it
before I realized it was my own hair
that was burning, sweet sickening odor.
Must have brushed the black candle
as I sat back down at my desk with tea,
must have glossed my blond strands into the fire,
must not have noticed the deadest part of me
was burning. Did not notice until there
was a gold foil in the black milky pool
of wax, black flakes in my hair.
And I feel nothing particular about it.
In two days my father’s body
will be ashes; in two days
we burn the last of childhood.
In the sky just now, one gray heaviness swells
and extinguishes another.
Maja Lukic received an MFA in poetry from Warren Wilson College. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Narrative, A Public Space, The Adroit Journal, Colorado Review, Sixth Finch, Copper Nickel, Poetry Northwest, and other journals. She lives in Brooklyn.
