I get it that Mama is building a myth – accordingly I’m being shushed.
Her hand up between us, she glares at me with her hateful impatience. I’m crushed,
as if I were younger than 60 years old, but I’m just a season away
from being advised to retire and sold prescriptions for feeling okay.

Indignantly passion then rises in me until I imagine her shrug.
“Get over it, Sadie,” she’d blurt and I see, as strong as our subsequent hug,
that only by laughing will I get enough,
that only by nodding, indulging her stuff,
and maybe occasionally speaking wise,
will I seem okay in her eyes.