Your Mother

Your mother was antediluvian.

Woollen skirts and flat soled shoes.

She burnt the dresses deemed to short

when the sun was low enough

that the neighbours wouldn’t see the smoke.

She spoke to you with asperity,

and I noticed when sleepovers

became weekends,

and then weeks.

Only to be punctured

by cantankerous phones calls

demanding locations.

The first time you swore,

she turned white.

It wasn’t really the first time,

but she’d never heard you before

and the fuck stabbed her

like all the little hair pins

she used to hold herself together.