Slow Burn
My mother’s life was fire, a smoulder
inching along the spliced fuse of her life.
Among her first words
were coke and coal
delivered by the black-smeared coalman
who emptied sacks on his shoulders into the cellar.
The chunks glistened in the scuttle.
Her breath was smoke,
her hands juggled embers. Blood she washed
from soldiers’ sheets
never stopped flowing.
Her truelove was blown up by a mine after the peace.
A glow already flickered in her lungs
by the time she made her vows to my father.
No one knew her flammability
but whatever she touched became a slow burn.
She didn’t want the strawberries
beside her hospital bed
and gave them all to me to ensure I would do all
the living for her. All that other loss she never had.
She left no trace but for the ash of her absence.
Rebecca Gethin has written 5 poetry publications. She was a Hawthornden Fellow and a Poetry School tutor. Vanishings was published by Palewell Press in 2020. Her next pamphlet, Snowlines, will be published this year.