Crumble
Author’s note: A poem I wrote in 2016.
The woman takes the child
by her tiny hand.
They walk to the end of the garden,
sit and play with the sand,
picking rhubarb that never
becomes a crumble.
Dead pheasants hang
by the kitchen window,
waiting to be plucked.
The musty smell
of hunting gear lingers;
the shotgun stands
twice the height of the child.
Bright red cartridges arouse her curiosity;
she touches them delicately,
she wonders if they’re to be played with,
all the while knowing
the pheasants hang dead.
The woman takes the child
by her tiny hand,
and while they play with the sand
the woman asks the child—
Why do your eyes look so sad?
I want to be a boy,
just like my dad.
But you’re not a boy,
you’re a girl.
I know. That’s why I’m sad.
The mother plays dead,
the child is scared.
Mother screaming, Wear a dress!
I want to be a cowboy.
Grow your hair so you can be pretty,
just like your mother.
Why can’t you be what I want you to be?
I’m sorry I disappoint you, Mother.
I can never be as pretty as you.
The woman takes the child
by her tiny hand—
and as they play with the sand
the woman asks the child—
Why do your eyes look so sad?
I want to be a girl,
just like my mother.
But you are a girl.
I know. That’s why I’m sad.
The child takes the woman
by her hand,
leads her to the end of the garden.
They sit and play with the sand.
The child asks the woman—
Why are your eyes so sad?
The woman replies,
I spent too many years
trying to be seen by my mother.
I didn’t see myself.
They picked rhubarb.
They made a crumble.
Thank you for reading.
This had such a painful keen of loss to it. I’ve struggled with gender expression since I was very young. I felt this then and remembering the confusion of my small self.
The poem feels like watching a whole childhood and a whole motherhood folding into each other, both carrying wounds they never asked for.
There’s something incredibly touching in those repeated scenes at the end of the garden the tiny hand, the sand, the rhubarb as if that place holds everything they can’t say out loud.
The early images of dead pheasants and hunting gear feel heavy, like the child is growing up surrounded by things she doesn’t quite understand but already feels.
The child’s sadness wanting to be a boy, then wanting to be a girl comes across not as confusion but as someone trying desperately to find a version of themselves that will finally be accepted.
The mother’s reactions hurt because they’re so recognisable: the panic, the denial, the pressure to fit a shape she herself once struggled with.
The moment the child apologises for disappointing her mother is heartbreaking; it’s the kind of apology no child should ever have to make.
When the question “Why do your eyes look so sad?” comes back to the mother, it lands with a quiet truth she’s been carrying her own sadness for years.
Her confession about trying to be seen by her own mother feels like the key to everything, the root of the whole ache.
And the ending, where they finally make the crumble, feels like a small, fragile moment of healing as if they’ve broken the cycle just a little.
It’s a tender, painful, deeply human piece about identity, inheritance, and the long journey toward seeing yourself.