When the fever shifts and loosens, 
I understand absence, being born again 
to solitude, the population of my hallucinations

elusive and in hiding. It is then
when I think of the woman I called mother 
by mistake and yearn for the soft yarn of her sweater,

the gloved hand taking mine
on the icy path, the way her lips were firm 
in their enunciation of my name, though never daughter.

Once, when I was still a child, 
she hoisted me into the low branches, 
her arms sturdy as the thick limb that held me.

I never doubted her power
of protection, the way she lured the bees 
away with a pot of sugared water or kept the stray

dogs at bay with a stick
kept ever at the ready. I know she wept 
when she brought me here because the nurses tell me.

They beg to know her name,
a number or address, but I press my lips, 
jaw clamped tight on the only lucid secret I have left.