MM ADJARIAN

Red Heart Sestina

I found Mama in a red felt cut-out heart
she meant to cross-stitch on a satin dress  
I wore one Halloween. Her heart fit
in my palm, memento of a homemade 
costume made for the autumn night
I became her Wonderland queen of tarts. 

Cooking, cleaning, baking apple tarts—  
these weren’t the dreams that lit her heart 
much as she knew that home kept night
and outsiders all at bay. Mama loved to dress
me, too, in bows and things homemade: 
her hands alone created the most perfect fit.
 
The heart I found was extra. It didn’t fit
the front dress space where red as tarts, 
the other hearts spilled down the homemade
neck-to-floor highway that paved my heart.
It lived in an old button bag after that dress
was gone, a cut-out memory of the night

bedsheet ghosts teased my regal airs. Night
hid my embarrassment, just as it hid my fit
of shame for a blue satin costume dress
and for the way a crazy tale of royal tarts
had stolen the imagination and the heart
of one who sang the praises of homemade.
 
I had yet to learn from all my homemade
clothes stitched by machine at night
that mama sewed to mend a wounded heart
that came from shrinking small to fit
inside a tailor, a cleaner, a baker of tarts.
Corsets, they squeezed her a house dress
                                               
not meant to meant for her, like the dress
she cut from satin cloth for a homemade
gown was meant to recall who made the tarts,
who broke the hearts, who ruled the night
who ruled the day; and showed it didn’t fit
the plan that I should ever cross her heart.
                                                                                               
Preteen queen of tarts, I wore a costume dress
minus the heart I kept and every inch homemade
for a night when the veil lifted, and we fit. 

M. M. Adjarian has published her creative work in such journals as he Baltimore Review, Verdad, South 85, Grub Street, The Ekphrastic Review, Eclectica, Crack the Spine, Across the Margin, Common Ground, The Courtship of Winds + the North Dakota Quarterly. Currently, she is revising a memoir and working on her first collection of poetry. She lives in Austin.