mother’s day · not the petrol-station kind

Mum — this is the year
I put it in writing.

You get flowers that die by Thursday and a card I clearly bought in the queue. Not this time. Sit down. Let the tea go cold for once. I’ve got things to say.

keep reading ↓

a photo of you before you were ‘Mum’

tap the frame — turn it over

nineteen, a moped, no idea I was coming

same eyes. same laugh. tireder, somehow funnier.

I forget, sometimes, that you were a whole person before you were mine. That there was a girl on a moped who hadn’t spent twenty years being woken at 3am. I’d have liked her. I’m glad she stayed.

a thing you say, that I now say

“”

I said it down the phone to a friend last week, in your exact voice, before I’d even decided to. Twenty-six years and you’re still in there, calm as anything, telling me the kettle’s on and the world isn’t ending. Turns out you were usually right.

what I get now, that I didn’t at fifteen

That “I’m not hungry, you have it” was never about being hungry.

At fifteen I thought you just didn’t fancy the last of it. I thought the lift you gave my mates was nothing, that the staying-up was what mums did, like it cost you nothing. It cost you plenty. You just never sent the bill. I see it now — every quiet thing you paid for so I wouldn’t have to.

so I kept the receipt. all of it.

MUM & CO.

est. the day I turned up · open all hours

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The lasagnes left on my doorstepx47

Midnight lifts, no questions askedx88

“We’ll sort it” — the night it fell apartx1

The last roast potato, surrenderedx999

Worrying, while I told you not to∞

TOTAL 0

AMOUNT DUEPRICELESS

paid in full

no returns · thank you for being our mum

no joke after this one.

Thank you, Mum.
For everything I never said.

— your kid x

(now put the kettle on. I’ll get it. sit down.)

recipe no. 1 · from the kitchen of

For Mum

how to make
one whole, alright sort of person

serves: one ungrateful teenager,
for roughly twenty-six years

tap to open the card

a card she won’t throw away

Mum — this is the yearI put it in writing.

For Mum

Mum — this is the year
I put it in writing.