Title: Mothering Sunday
Author: kbk
Claimer: Not that I make any money from this, but it's still mine and I'll be pissed off if anyone steals it, because. Look at the fucker. This is mine.
Notes: You might expect this to be nice. The first couple of lines are. The rest...

Still, on the sill of the bathroom window
Is a baby hairbrush, little and soft.
It used to belong to my mother.

The chemo caused her hair to fall out.

The steroids left her senile at the age of forty-nine -
One day she lost sixteen years,
And waited for me to be born.

There's a High Calcium Cookbook in the kitchen
Wedged between Delia and the Beros
The cancer gnawed on her bones,
Thinned her blood.
Killed her.

I think of her, sometimes.
How she faded, inch by painful inch,
Then drifted away in days of gentle sleep.

I think of her, almost five years ash,
In a grave marked only
With her parents' names.