Sestina for My Mother

You lugged hope to teashops: your keen-eyed girl,
the child you believed could conquer blue worlds
with her wit. You showed her Klimt and tested
her recall for French while she sat, a friend
in small-scale, helping you forget a distressed
flight, by sea, from the old country. You confessed

the burden of swift uprooting, confessed
to narrow rooms, pickling jars for cups. The girl
listened through silk braids, sensing distress.
By after-school light, books became the girl’s world,
as books had been your world, well-thumbed print friends
on the shelf, refuge when fate sent its tests.

The girl fell ill from infection, testing
the will you had left. Damp, scared, she confessed
her strength had turned like a changeable friend.
So, you took her to doctors, who told the girl
they had run various tests, and your world
halted. The girl might have mental distress,

claimed the doctors, might be tired, distressed,
wanting reprieve from her studies, and the test
results—negative—only showed her world-weary.
This was no contrived pang, the girl confessed.
You believed her, sunk in her wheelchair, your girl
whose verve had once lit teashops. You’d be a friend,

then, as stalwart as red cedar. A friend,
a mother with roots. Still, your daughter’s distress
grew when doctors said they had nothing for girls
with an illness few cared to thoroughly test.
It was simpler to shrug behind desks, they confessed,
to leave girls forgotten in beds, for the world

spun on. The girl became a woman. Her world
held blank hours, sore limbs, seclusion. Old friends
fell away; your grief felt hard to confess,
while doctors, half-hearted, reviewed the distress.
In the girl’s blood and cells, they ran new tests:
her body was ill after all. The girl

had nearly forsaken the world. Your distress
hid in your friendly heart. But these cumbrous tests
had rendered you mother—thus you confessed to the girl.