Phobia
Phobia is a word that annoys me.
It sounds like a Roman girl's name
and I can imagine myself, mistakenly,
writing merrily away about the myth of
Jupiter and Phobia. And besides
the Roman girls never had any backbone.
Just look at Lucretia.

I am afraid of falling things
but phobia is the wrong word for it,
a word too scientific, too precise for
a recurrent child's nightmare of watching,
helpless,
as something crashes down on me,
as a tree falls in the forest

And I do not like the stars
hanging great and silvery from the echoing
rafters of the silent school hall
I will not sit underneath them.
The irony of being killed by a falling star
does not escape me; but it would be
poor comfort.


Emily Adlam
Diocesan School for Girls
Auckland
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