Privit

‘I don’t fight, I quarrel with questions’
said my mother wearing a bathwater necklace,
watching me hips hooked on to the radiator,
give the cistern a stare.

‘She lets her manners out like litter’
she says to the wall,
and I want to show her that my manners
are like privit, that I keep the things I mean
flat as flowers in a book under the bath.