Household Fires

Is something happening
inside me. That I can’t see

or feel. A plastic bag
full of wind.

A strapless dress
balled up inside.

On the television a woman
says Somebody just struck

a match and lit my pilot light.
The coupling of two

Sunday afternoons. During the war
I drew seams up the back of my legs

with a pencil. A candle
left unattended. In this mask

I am a wolf of a woman.
In these furs. I hope not.

Lily Ladewig is the author of The Silhouettes (SpringGun Press, 2012) and, with Anne Cecelia Holmes, the e-chapbook I Am A Natural Wonder (Blue Hour Press, 2011). Her poems have appeared in Conduit, Denver Quarterly, H_NGM_N, Salt Hill, Sixth Finch, and Spinning Jenny. She lives in Brooklyn, NY.