Henrietta hoovers the house,
then puts herself in the understairs cupboard,
taking herself out the next day
to do it all again. The dust balls
are the size of tumours.
She ambushes skin cells
in the bathroom, sucks up bones
in the bedroom. There is nothing
she can do about the bloody
footprints. As she works,
she sings to herself, For you are dust,
then to dust you shall return.
When her bag sits full,
she wonders whether anyone will know.
Sam Szanto is an award-winning, Pushcart prize-nominated writer living in Durham, United Kingdom. Her poetry pamphlet, This Was Your Mother, was published by Dreich Press; Splashing Pink was published by Hedgehog Press and was a Poetry Book Society Pamphlet Choice; her short-story collection, If No One Speaks, was published by Alien Buddha Press. She won the Wirral Festival Poetry Prize, the Charroux Poetry Prize and the First Writer Poetry Prize. She is working on a PhD on parenthood-poetry and identity at York St. John University.