The Champagne Room

A field of lilies she said I was
a water-patch for broken skin
a still point in a world running mad
with time and again

she has the soft-shelled eyes of one
accustomed to love. She even moves as if
she still believes in things
and their meaning

perhaps in her own crystalline ways.

Around us we wait for prayer
for sparkling glasses and twisted
memory to be served
in an hour of need.




Milla van der Have (1975) wrote her first poem at 16, during a physics class. She has been writing ever since. In 2013, one of her short stories won a New Millennium Fiction Award. Milla lives and works in Utrecht, The Netherlands.