Detritus
She starts with a cupboard, ditching skirts
and dresses which no longer fit or suit. The lace top
she wore to Andrea’s wedding which confirmed
her lack of cleavage; out it goes. The bin bag
crackles in her hands. Its weight makes her gasp
and she ties a knot in the top and tells herself
she’ll stop, in a moment. Once she’s searched
under her son’s unmade bed, and excavated
three ten-franc coins filmed with dust,
a headless green one-legged Power Ranger,
a stegosaurus with a bitten tail, a book token
from last Christmas and the plastic wrist-band
he wore the day he was born, the one he asked for
and promised to keep safe. She sits back,
reads his name, his sex, his weight in kilos,
meaningless. Thinks of marbled breasts, the weight
of them outrageous, the sting of gummed nipples.
The way her milk wasn’t white, but thin and blue.
Page(s) 38
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