Sibling
I helped my mother pick
ripe gooseberries
loaded with their bitter seeds.
She straightened up
rested her hand on her vast belly –
my sun was blotted out.
I saw my mother rushed to hospital
in a screaming ambulance.
Days later she came home
with a red-faced creature
whose siren-shriek
made my milk teeth curl.
I watch my mother wash
mountains of stinking nappies.
So I take the consolation doll
and, with my seaside spade,
bury it under the gooseberry bush –
a trial run for tonight.
Clare Marsh recently completed an Intermediate Poetry course at UEA/WCN. She won the Sentinel Annual Short Story competition (2013). Her poem 93442- the Numbers of War won a WW1 competition and was shortlisted for the Wells Literary Festival (2014).