Mother Was Not Smooth, a Sestina

By Stephanie Mesler

Mother was not smooth; she was not genteel.  

Mother was sharp, like a needle in the eye,

and blunt, like a butcher’s mallet.  

Born into a motherless home, she learned early to cope with solitude.  

Alone with a man who had not planned on raising any child, much less a daughter, 

She learned to love silence

Early morning darkness enveloped her in silence.  

Gowned evenings among the genteel, 

away from the home and daughter

that demanded more than just the mother’s watchful eye,

used up all of her sociability, stole her grace and made her seek solitude, 

wherever it could be found.  Her mornings, she guarded with a tone that crushed like a mallet,

“Why are you awake?  Go back to bed,” decreed the mallet.

Don’t you know this is mother’s alone time?  Silence!  

She sat on the sofa, smoking in the dark, surrounded in her solitude.  

Here, she was herself, for herself; bereft of the veneer of the genteel

politician artist preacher’s wife.  In her jaundiced eye,

There was no love for the home, the man, or the daughter.  

I was the invisible daughter -

she, who learned to avoid the mallet -

she, who was also a needle in the eye.

I moved from room to room, through pea soup silence,

cutting through the air, like the well mannered and genteel

cut through societal barriers and silence.  

I learned from the lonliest how to embrace solitude.

My own points got sharper and my tongue grew terse; I am my mother’s daughter,

in the end, so much more than my father’s - he valued the elegant genteel,

even as his own words cut to the bone and his fists crushed like a mallet.  

In a daughter, he valued only bragging rights and silence.  

I was to be evidence of his own value, proof that he could create what was first seen in his mind’s eye.  

Mother looked the other way when he punched me in the eye, 

an event that led to a full week’s solitude.  

I was condemned to missing school, unending silence 

at home, time for my wound to heal, so no one would look at me and see the daughter

of a monster and his mallet.  

I was captive to  that blinding veneer genteel.  

I have grown to be both sharp and smooth, the daughter

of a mallet, who is, myself, a blunt, hard, damaging, self-protective mallet.

I am also capable of gentle, gentlewomanly gentility.  I am needle Genteel.

Mother Was Not Smooth, a Sestina is © Stephanie Mesler 2023

The Prognosis

By Stephanie Mesler

When they say you might (or might not) die,

That you might just be miserable for the rest of your days,

but they can’t say how many days of misery you’ll get to enjoy,

you try on clairvoyance.  

Looking ahead, how far do you see?

Can you see another 25 years?  

How does the next decade look?

Can you see next year?

Next month?

Next week?

Are you sure of tomorrow?

When these questions cannot be answered,

when you look ahead and see nothing at all,

you get philosophical.

No one ever knows which day will be their last, do they?

Shouldn’t we all live our todays like they might be our last days?  

You decide to assume tomorrow may not come again;

You act like you have nothing to lose

And, before you know it, you have built the life you always wanted,

A life you really don’t want to lose.  

And that’s when it happens.  

The Prognosis is © Stephanie Mesler 2019