my mother asks me how to leave my father

it’s about the dogs, she says
she sits and she isn’t mother

but helpless nonetheless, a divorce
is as much about leaving as it is

about what you take with you
what you can carry and it’s the dogs

they need homes, you can’t leave
dogs, it goes against the soul

so you leash them with soft hands
you direct them into kind-natured

killing until whatever you are
whatever even mattered, is that

your house has become twilight
a shade of desperation and they

say Cerberus was once a snake
coiled around his master’s ankles

you see, so many things can be called dogs
love for instance when it’s sweaty

and pawing your cheek for attention
or when it springs up unawares and

catches you, in shackles for hands
eager and panting, as it spills

like a pomegranate at your feet

Originally featured in the Oxford Brookes International Poetry Competition, selected by guest judge Fiona Benson, with special commendation in the English as an Additional Language Category (EAL).

Milla van der Have (The Netherlands, 1975) is a Gemini. Her poetry has been published in Cherry Tree, Otis Nebula and Ninth Letter a.o. In 2016 her chapbook Ghosts of Old Virginny was published. Milla lives and works in Utrecht, the Netherlands, with her wife and two rabbits (that sometimes appear in her poetry).