It is Saturday morning. While my mum washes
her hair in the sink with Fairy liquid, I search her room.
I find a coffee-stained parenting guide, opened at pages
twenty three and four: Is my child autistic? The last time
she acquired parenting tips from OK! Magazine she stuck
a food chart on the wall and painted the kitchen a patronising
shade of bubblegum. Dad didn’t notice. He didn’t notice
when mum shaved her head after watching This is England.
He didn’t notice when I started vaping, and drinking
Marshmallow cider. Sometimes I’d deliberately blow
strawberry smoke through the crack in the living room
door while he was watching Countryfile, just to see
his reaction. Still nothing.

I asked mum whether he was depressed, but she
just said that’s what happens when you reach middle
age. I searched on Yahoo.com: ‘Self-help for the over-forties’.
All that came up was a picture of a man in spandex
reading poetry to drunk teachers, and a link to laughter
yoga. I asked mum if it was normal to feel prematurely
middle-aged. She just glared at me with animosity,
flicking her potent hair in my face that smelled of Boots
foot cream and bleach. Subject closed.

Charlie Jolley has been published in Hive anthologies Dear 2021 and Dear Life, Land of Poets (Seren), EDGE Magazine, and Chaos Dive Reunion (forthcoming). She is the second-prize winner of the 1381 Protest Poetry Competition and was highly commended in the Wales Young Poet of the Year Award.