My mother said mothers

are vessels of pain.

Triangled bellies

and a girlhood of spasms—

mothers carry water

in baskets of blood.

She tells me:

We pure as milk.

Ships are also ‘she’s’

and we are ships on a slope of ocean

sailing north to build gardens

of scarred fruits.

When it starts to rain,

I grip my mother’s hand:

it is a fossil of my own.

Afternoon songs haunt the heat

and we climb on, small fractures

on the rib of history.

---

SARA MURRAY is a graduate of English Literature & Creative Writing at the University of Warwick. She currently works as a Content Manager in London and writes, paints and cooks in her spare time. Her work has previously been published in FGRLS CLUB and Kamena Magazine.