Lovely Parasite
by and published in Edition Ten of Pomegranate
Like a worm you burrowed your way into my heart,
your blunt nose nudging the sweet meat.
Squirming deeper like a slim finger
into a ripe peach.
Each day you suckle at my flesh
like an insistent infant.
Soon there’ll be nothing left
but a wet, hollow fist
and you will squeeze out of a vein,
your blind face probing the air
for a new home.
But for now I like to feel you, safe,
in the crux of me. Your silken rings
turning languorously,
your five hearts beating within my own.
Rowena Knight
Rowena Knight is 21 and studies Classics and History at Durham University, where she is Vice-President of the university’s Poetry Society. Her poems have been published in One Night Stanzas, the Cadaverine and Rising magazine, and this year she was a winner of the Cadaverine-Ilkley Award for Young Writers.