I throw away a mouldy bottle
in a kitchen, filled with crap
piled high with guilt and clutter
bean tins and baby hats.
I walk through my house, in tiny steps
over, and through, debris.
I kick aside a washing pile
that blows through the house like leaves.
From upstairs, I hear crying
and my numbed heart does not tug.
But dread echoes round my aching chest
sucked raw, and dripping blood.
A little face looks up at me,
a new one every time.
Bald and spotted and screaming
and I’m not sure that she’s mine.
Ellen Uttley is a working class writer and mother-of-two, from a mining town in northern England. She enjoys working across a number of different genres and themes, with poetry and prose covering everything from mental health and motherhood to the myths of Ancient Greece. Her prose has appeared in the Hive anthology Surfing the Twilight and her poetry is due to feature in this Augusts issue of Streetcake magazine.
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