Philomena van Rijswijk

Just friends is killing me; just friends is the stake impaling my heart; just friends is the barb mocking at my side, it is the metal filing piercing my eye, and the shard of glass hidden in my

I sat there and prayed to have the wooden spike prised from my infected heart; I sat there and wished you were a splinter under my fingernail, like the ones my mother used to get from the

The moon wakes me, moonily kissing my eyes... (a pewter voyeur, her gaze doesn\'t waver when I catch her watching me in my sleep). Her steady eye caresses my violet temple and my cheek. I bare my

Such an emptiness in me, and I don\'t know what it is. Such an emptiness in me. Is it like sitting on a bus waiting for your stop? someone asks. Is it like sitting on the train, waiting for your

Remember when it snowed? Remember when it snowed! You went, blinded, with him, alone into the snow. It seemed there was no one else in that white, enfolding world, although those blurred

I know your nakedness. I know your feet: sheep-milk-pale and fine-tuned, the catgut of tendons tightened to the lautari\'s jagged pitch. And I know your legs: small, muscular, the

Chamber-slops of disheartened rain, and a crooked slit in the curtains exposing a too-bright night sky- jaundiced, yellow-violet, bleary with cold and ice and dripdripdrip sluicing the air

You make me so sad, my hands hurt. You make me so sad, I whimper in my sleep. Like the toothless old pig-dog at the sheep-country pub, my throat has a brick in its mouth. I can barely

Like the girl riding on the whale\'s back, I strained for air. This leviathan called love, this ancient mammal, half fish, half mountain, submerged in the salt, heading down under wave, wrack,

Both silver-haired, we lie on the grass in the sun, soaking autumn up into our bones. Who cares if we kiss? if you rest your hand on me there? if I slide my hand inside your shirt? There are

Bleached cloth hardly brushing bare skin, brillo bush like a bristle brush; shuffling shadows of leaves flicking, licking, teasing the bedroom wall\'s flatness; three stars in a line: three

I am kissing you! you said, and they were the first words I ever heard. I am kissing you! you told me, and all the words in the world ever said before would no longer be: words on a million

Sweet week, oh! sweetest of weeks! when I became a wild honeycomb; week when I was a ruff of waxen lace, a fine throat-ruffle of wax; when I was a pleating of bee-perfumed honeybed spilling over

Greedy, sometimes... other times, almost mechanical; we hold back enough to remember who we are; we hold back enough to make a quick exit, before it\'s too late. We feel our hearts, our

Rest here, Heart, in these cupped hands that make a cradle filled with air- only air- sweet and gentle. O! rest here, my Heart! Gather yourself up and sleep here, in the bowl made by

I will knock on the door of Room 22. You have told me you will be there with lilies. Blue lilies. I know the sort. Agapanthus. You know why, and I know why. We will walk along the esplanade

You said you would wait for me behind the shed... the shed behind The Lotus Eaters. You would take my hands and lead me behind the tree. You said we could walk to the Friendly Grocer and buy

My whole world is outside my window- is the stonework of Trinity House, where a wanton sun sprawls, spreadeagled and unselfconscious... The whole world is the white corner-post of the porch- a

Love has lit me with his luminous sap; life has smeared me with his amber syrup; lust has anointed me with the holy chrism on his thumb. All life is xylem; all life is phloem; all life is ebb

Is this how the seed feels in the ground after first rain? Is this how the lacquered bean, with its polished skin, feels after its first drenching? Is this how the dicotyledon feels swelling

Even my belly, my belly is sad; even my breasts, my breasts are now droopy and sad. Even my hidden place, my hidden place is now mournful and sad. My hands are now listless and sad; a fine

Lust has such a dark and viscous weight- mooning like an oil slick, humping and slumping on the tide like a moaning leviathan sick with dreams, pitching and ballasting darkly, larded with a