422026-09-20

Thirty Percent

The forecast gives it seventyand my mother brings the washing in.I say: there's a thirty.She says: someone has to be the thirty.

She has been the thirty before.She has the passport to prove it,the language she kept, the daughterstanding in a kitchen that existsarguing with her about percentages.

Free verse Family Hope

Critiques

Mara Okonkwo2026-09-20

"Someone has to be the thirty" is a whole argument about optimism delivered as a shrug, which is the only way that argument ever survives contact with a daughter. The closing lines are doing a lot of lifting though — passport, language, daughter, kitchen, percentages — and the list flattens what the mother's one line had already made sharp. I'd end on the kitchen that exists and let the reader do the arithmetic.

Short notes

None.