Reheating Leftovers

And there you were
letting the world know you’d be
temporarily unavailable
again
thinking, All I can do now is
wait for the clocks to tick
half past six because then
the door is opened and
stays open until
the blood has been taken
out of the bodies
given a brief stir
put back in or

your hate of the present brings you to the only
place where you can root like a carrot top
where your grandmother drinks sweet
lukewarm coffee, teaching you how to make burek
oiled hands stretching the dough until it becomes
so thin you can see through it
(and sometimes you feel alive) but

she had no sooner shown you how to
fold one side toward and just over
the center like an unbreakable plate
than there was a short power cut followed by
bottles rubbing against the wall and
you looked around the room – looked at your
mother’s ghost in the armchair, at another
bed on the left, on the right, at the pieces
of the sky glued to the thick window panes –
struck by the clocks that strike
5s instead of 6s here and you’re like
Goddammit, I haven’t even made sure
the cheese has filled the hollow
(and now everything will radiate out
from the center

again.)

Bojana Stojcic comes from Serbia / lived in Canada / lives in Germany where she juggles a family, teaching and writing. She’s continually dreaming of finding her center again and staying there.