Rachel Burrows

I have always hated Mother’s Day - as an ungrateful child and a guilty mother - and this poem was born out of that. I have also just said goodbye to young adult-children after Christmas and it seems very relevant. I’m still working my way round children as visitors - it’s very confusing. Should I be treating them like prodigal children, celebrating their every second with me - or resuming nagginess about the takeover of the kitchen counters, the stealing of tweezers and scattering of shoes -...

Some background on the poem below: ‘If they are not there, I won’t have to deal with them.’  I find that hard to write, because it was an...