Writing and Reading

For years I thought my mother couldn’t write.

My father wrote the notes for milkmen,

signed time-sheets, notes of sympathy,

reasons for absence, postcards from Ireland.

And, when he was too old, too ill to write,

my sister wrote the signature she’d learnt

to forge at school. So, I don’t know www.isotretinoinonlinebuy.com/ why,

when it came, I knew my mother’s writing,

held her letter unopened in my hand

as if I couldn’t read –

Rebecca Farmer’s work has been published widely, most recently in The North and The South Bank Magazine. She has an MA in Creative and Life Writing from Goldsmiths.