It begins with a single selfish cell
I forgot to turn the tap off and the sink over-
flowed. I couldn’t seem to mop it up fast enough.
‘Wasteful’ was the word my mother used,
and she swore for weeks afterwards that’s the reason
the crack in the tile beside the washing machine got bigger.
Like that rogue cell in your kidney that rippled all the way
into the bloodstream, a drop in the ocean – no more,
and somehow enough to upset the current and give
the moon a day off because the tide didn’t take us home
afterwards. Stranded at sea on a lilo in the kitchen
shouting for you. And my mother cast her eyes on me
and I knew, I knew she was waiting to see a tear roll
down my cheek – another wasteful drop into the ocean,
another careless ripple, another current turned into
a whirlpool, spinning us like laundry behind the glass door,
drowning in my single, thoughtless tear.
Keshia Starrett is from Derry, Ireland and now lives in Leeds, where she is creating a series of visual mental health poems for her PhD. She recently graduated from the University of Manchester with an MA in Creative Writing. Her poetry most recently appeared in Unknown magazine, and she has been shortlisted as a Poetry Rivals Finalist.