Bojana Stojcic

★ ★ ★ ★

POETRY

Image by Zaeem Nawaz

‘Baby-Stepping Toward’

Today I came across a fallen nestling perched on a low-hanging branch, wings drooping from its shoulders like a long black cloak, bones and muscles trying to adjust to the workload of bearing weight. Nowhere near flying, this little thing, nowhere near standing. I came across a fallen nestling and put it back to where it belongs, Rilke against my skin like a river swelling out of its banks—if I’m changing, I am no longer who I was.

‘Haibum for a Rainy Day’

Back in Belgrade, the temperatures were sizzling toward 104F in the last week of June. It felt like being put inside an oven and staying there. Each night I’d shudder like my back was broken next to my mom who’d turn into a thick layer of dust in four months, five tops, according to doctors. I arrived at the departure lounge to board my flight earlier than usual, to avoid another heat wave, Germany welcoming me back with its 57 degrees in July, all grey and swollen with rain. The morning I set off, mom pointed at the beans splashing around in a stainless steel pot, asked how many make a soup, like it had taken a body with all its obstructions and failures for her to stop cooking life a chef. Days after, I couldn’t shake the little ones hopping inside the pressure cooker as if desperately trying to find a way out. Like people who jump from the window to save themselves from fire.

blistering hot
if hiding in a fridge
was an option