Foster

by Claire Keegan

I am in a spot where I can neither be what I always am nor turn into what I could be.

Her hands are like my mother’s hands but there is something else in them too, something I have never felt before and have no name for. I feel at such a loss for words but this is a new place, and new words are needed.

‘Where there’s a secret,’ she says, ‘there’s shame – and shame is something we can do without.’

Everything changes into something else, turns into some version of what it was before.

‘God help you, child,’ she whispers. ‘If you were mine, I’d never leave you in a house with strangers.’