Two Poems by Millie Guille

Sonnet for Stockings on a One-Night Stand

Mother often tells me that hold-ups are a gauntlet thrown at karma.
They are Judas-in-silk, where you think you’ll get a kiss but really
they’re just waiting to betray you. “Mother,” I laugh, as I pat her head
and put her in a box labelled Cynical Things, “I’ve worn them at galas,
I’ve worn them on the Tube, I’ve met the Poet Laureate whilst wearing
them (askew). I’m much too old to listen when you tell me what to do.”
So when he called I fished them out and glazed my flanks like an
amateur chef, then sank on the bed to let them rest and played the
drums on my bored little breasts, oh Mother— I didn’t think it through.
I walked to the station and halfway there they started to slip to
God knows where, yes they threw up their hands as though clothes
felt despair, and curled in a heap at my shoes. Then I saw the guy,
all six-foot-fine, before I could duck his eyes met mine, so I panicked
and ran past the ‘No Pick-Up’ sign. How I wish that this tale was untrue.

It Wasn’t Making Love

You gave me your number in Whole Foods,
between the salmon tartare and a Bluefin steak
that cost more than my weekly salary.
I learnt you’d been intermittent fasting,
that you’d only kissed water for three whole days
like a ripped metropolitan Moses,
how you’d seen me and wanted to eat.
It wasn’t making love, it was breaking bread
where your cock was a sourdough Challah
and your mouth was a pilgrim worshipping
at the site of my brioche rosettes.
Winter had been long. I needed to be touched,
so I gave myself up— out of loneliness, fear.
It wasn’t making love, no I’d had enough of love.
It was being consumed enough to disappear.

Millie Guille is a writer and editor, and holds an MSt in Creative Writing from the University of Oxford. Her poetry has been longlisted for the National Poetry Competition and the inaugural Women’s Poetry Prize, and shortlisted for the Aurora Poetry Prize and the Oxford Brookes International Poetry Competition.