I have never seen my mother cry.

My mum

I’ve heard her, just once. In the darkness of a hotel room, I lay on the sofa-bed staring at the ceiling listening to her sob, quietly, so as not to disturb either myself, or my father.  

I was fully grown. Forty something, and we’d travelled north because I was working on a poetry project that required a re-visit of the seaside town where I’d spen…