Sophie van Waardenberg
At Afternoon Tea She Asks,
Why Did You Decide to Join Lesbianism?
Because when I make the first kiss.
Because I am not a good musician.
Because I don’t live here but I can buy the milk.
Because I gave up on the gentler slope.
Because no skill was required.
Because my parents. Because the tongue.
Because the reading period was open.
Because if I stare at my body long enough
I understand its topography is sane.
Because when I pray I must imagine.
Because if I will be sinful—and I will—
I may as well do it nicely.
Because the vegetables. Because the girls.
Because because. Because after the question
I accept a scone and leave the shape of my teeth
in its cold butter, its warm dough.
Dose
‘And I have a lot of puddings, and in six to eight weeks it can be redeemed.’
— Punch-Drunk Love
I don’t think I told you
I don’t take my little treats anymore
though there are three spare
in a plastic pot beside my pillow.
In the last days of their half-lives
I got scared can you blame me?
My arms were hurting
and I didn’t have permission.
I learnt once that medicine is a soldier
with a sweet blank face.
Thinking about him now I am so lonely.
The first thing I forget is the taste
the second thing I forget is the silence
the third thing is the season
and the fourth is desire.
I will never go outside again.
No I do not want to die
I am not even unhappy.
I am in the freezer I am in the heart
I am in the empty house.
The days are safe but god they’re deficient of bliss
so it was good last night
when I saw the puddings over and over again.
In the glass, puddings, and puddings to the right.
Shining puddings of permanence toddling down the supermarket aisle.
I laughed to hear myself laughing.
Sorry. It’s what I need.
Someone’s backyard fire, tiny pieces of rain.
You brought me in your car.
Here, attached to my warm beer, I’m poking holes in the grass.
Later when the only song I know comes on
I’ll do my little shriek. I’ll do my little dance.
Will it bother you? It’s horrible, yes,
but what if I’m enacting joy, what if I’m grieving.
You’ll ask me if I’m ready to leave.
Sure, whenever! I’m so easy. I don’t soliloquise.
Today it was all here: the hugeness of an egg
in my mouth at breakfast,
the watertight sack of clothing tucked
into the tip of a kayak ten years ago,
the fresh ham sandwich on the orange bus,
the stubborn canal beneath the solid road.
It was all here, I didn’t know what to do with it—
gasped, opened a window, wasn’t enough.
Not the book of Job
They’re cutting down trees
on Greenwood Place
nobody attends to my failures
nobody tries to buoy me
and the sun drops and drops
her sharp leaves on my head.
We’re getting ready for winter
and we’re not there yet.
We’re in the back then
before the bliss fades
and there’s time
for one more brave song,
one more can of Blue Ribbon,
one more visit to the lake.
Look at me. I am unbegrudging.
I am the openest pair of arms.
I expect no reward
but if my father called me
I’d answer
without suspicion
and if upon me were planted
a thick kiss, I’d sip from it.
Sophie van Waardenberg is a writer from Tāmaki Makaurau. She holds an MFA from Syracuse University where she was editor-in-chief of Salt Hill Journal. Her first chapbook, ‘does a potato have a heart?’, was published in AUP New Poets 5 (2019). Her poems about eating carbohydrates and kissing girls can be found in Cordite, Sweet Mammalian, The Spinoff and Ōrongohau|Best New Zealand Poems. Her debut poetry collection No Good was published by Auckland University Press in August 2025.