Pain built a glass house
around my mother.
Precise, incremental,
day by month by year.
The first walls
Were thin, transparent.
They began to thicken and rise
past crumbled hips, tired heart,
to the eye that screamed and went black.
I could still see my mother then,
but the glass cinderblocks
changed her shape.
She blurred and diminished,
Grew indistinct.
The wall was nearly done.
In the ER chaos
she sat on a toilet
in full view, invisible.
I saw the last huge glass brick
Swinging up into place.
Then an orderly said to me,
“I know you. You were my teacher.
You changed my life.”
The brick came down long enough
For my mother to hear him say,
“Your daughter changed my life”.
Pain left the room,
and my mother and I talked,
Then she slept.
When she woke,
the glass house was finished.
