WICK
FARAH GHAFOOR
Day breaks on your knee: You kiss the dew
out of the air and wait for nothing more than change.
For children to gather in clumps and feel at the sun
in their mothers’ wombs. For mothers to wear the sky
like a crown of billowing light and crystal roses,
and for their husbands to make space on their glass thrones.
You wait for heat to knead your body
into hard toffee. You want a lion’s laugh, your skin
a mane of glistening liquid gold. You decide
that you will forever go to bed early and listen
to the last birds cry the same two notes over
and over, honey beaks dripping of old songs.
You wait like a match, a white candle
that will never earn fire.
out of the air and wait for nothing more than change.
For children to gather in clumps and feel at the sun
in their mothers’ wombs. For mothers to wear the sky
like a crown of billowing light and crystal roses,
and for their husbands to make space on their glass thrones.
You wait for heat to knead your body
into hard toffee. You want a lion’s laugh, your skin
a mane of glistening liquid gold. You decide
that you will forever go to bed early and listen
to the last birds cry the same two notes over
and over, honey beaks dripping of old songs.
You wait like a match, a white candle
that will never earn fire.
FARAH GHAFOOR is a sixteen-year-old poet and a founding editor at Sugar Rascals. Her work is published or forthcoming in Ninth Letter, alien mouth, Big Lucks among other places, and has been recognized by the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. Farah is the recipient of the 2016 Alexandria Quarterly Emerging Artists and Writers Award. She believes that she deserves a cat. Find her online at fghafoor.tumblr.com.