I couldn’t call for my mother
I never could
She was inside the larder
Scolding the empty shelves

Where are you mother?
Are you beside the river of time?
Watching the shadows of pilots in the flames
Are you sleeping beside their graves?

I couldn’t call for my mother
I never could scream out
Was she in the room above?
The room with no furniture

As my body broke out in blisters
And spiders crawled all over me
Was she trapped inside a specimen case
Mending a hole in her stocking

Not once did I call for my mother
She was never there
She slept inside a crisp packet
She was always somewhere else

A child can grow up
Not deserving a mother
The rocks and the stones tell you this
The cardboard walls whisper it
The paste pearls left on the dressing table tell you this
A materialist society tell you this
It screams it at you, glad that you have been discluded