and stand in a long line of sinners like me

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sestina


Here's how the sestina turned out. It's missing the envoy at the end but I'm happier without it. Another stanza would be forced and awkward. I wrote most of it last night when I what I was feeling was impossible. Dark. I was imagining what it would be like if my whole life felt like that, if I continue to grow up into those kinds of feelings, wondering if my capacity for feeling lonely would only deepen and stretch with age. I wrote it wondering what my children would think if they saw me like that, so that's how the poem began. As I wrote the driver character became less and less me but the thoughts behind her remained. I woke up this morning to finish the piece hoping my feelings around it would have changed, that I would have time to u-turn it in one or two more stanzas but I couldn't. I wish me out of the woods.


We go home

The snow wouldn’t melt on the cold road
and collected, as though being cold was effortless.
Our mother cried, silently, with her mouth open,
We hushed in the back seat and took in no air.
It used to be a big deal, these episodes;
By now we knew better than to take her hand.

The steering wheel looked huge, unmanageable in my mother’s hand
as she guided us down the darkening road.
The drive home was just another gray episode
marking our day-in, day-out, otherwise numb and effortless.
This was something. Around our car was the loud rush of cold air
and I noticed our mother had her window open.

“Would you get my makeup bag open?”
My mother’s face was in her hands
and a fresh spray of perfume sat dead in the air.
She hadn’t taken her eyes off the whitening road.
I imagined her perfume freezing in the air, effortlessly,
and raining to the carpet in pearl-thump episodes.

Not a word during the makeup ritual of her episode,
Strange how, when applying lipstick, her mouth isn’t open.
the silent sobbing has stopped, she steers effortlessly.
Her fingernails look redder on the ends of her hands.
Her breath is the only warmth in the car, fogging the air
We all lean to accommodate the curve in the road.