Sunburn: Exclusive American Edition with Additional Material

by Chloe Michelle Howarth

I am afraid that we might all be our mothers’ daughters.

She makes me think about cooking her dinner and reading to her and cleaning up for her. The domestic things I once pitied Mother for are things I now crave.

We are so far away from everything. Mothers, money, men, all miles away.

am seventeen, I need a mother. It isn’t enough to hope that I can stay out of her eyeline until I can leave home. I need my mammy. I won’t apologise for that. If she would let me, I would cling to her side, I would be a little fruit fly in her kitchen again. Mother, look at me, I am not ready to let you go.

The sun is going down. I am running out of time. Very soon, I will have to decide whether I am brave enough to be with her. To be with her is a sin, to be without her is a tragedy.

She is a sun too hot to enjoy.

Stop me from going back to her, stop her sunlight from burning through me.