She baked every other day
and seldom left the back room and kitchen
except to go to bed.
One day a week she would leave home
to collect her pension.
She spoke of being a suffragette
of being a strong, independent woman
of teaching mill girls about contraception
in an age where such talk was profanity.
She had a rheumatic hip
never married nor left home
except for a camping holiday in Ireland.
She told me my great-grandfather was a fool
for choosing love over upbringing.
She would rather have a fool than a politician.
Vera Brittain had been amongst her late friends
she once met George Bernard Shaw.
Two months before she died
she told me about the letters
they had been tied with ribbon
and kept in a locked box
it had been a long time since she had read them.
She told me the writer had died in Gallipoli
the last time she saw him
was in the hallway of the house she still lived in
his death was officially notified weeks later.
She told me she placed the letters on the fire
though they were ash she wanted me to know
someone had to remember.
© Shirley-Anne Kennedy
2015
Langley Writers
