Mother Love

Let me tell you about my mother
about silences and love withheld

the need to communicate
and the need to escape

longing to be praised for what I had achieved
not for the compliant proper girl I had never been

we kept things light for a long while
sharing shoes and a love of good dressing

At the end she didn’t want me
at the end I failed to grieve for her

stood silent at the wake as strangers told me
of the lovely lady who made them want to love her

bereft of my mother for years
I was wounded once more at her death

Kim Whysall-Hammond grew up in London in a working-class family, but now lives deep in the English countryside. She obtained a degree in Astronomy from UCL and has worked in both Climate Research and Telecommunications. A late comer to publishing poems, her poetry has appeared in American Diversity Report, Alchemy Spoon, Amsterdam Quarterly, London Grip, North of Oxford, Ink, Sweat and Tears, Marble Poetry, Crannóg and others. Her speculative poetry has appeared in Andromeda Spaceways, Eternal Haunted Summer, Frozen Wavelets, Kaleidotrope, On Spec, Silver Blade and Star*line. She also has poems in anthologies from Palewell Press, Wild Pressed Books, Milk and Cake Press, Experiments in Fiction and Brigids Gate Press. Find more of her work at https://thecheesesellerswife.wordpress.com/