I am a language my mother forgot how to speak. 
She is a country engaged in a war against aging. 
I am her Sweden,
neutral, not allied,
waiting outside her boundaries
for official tours to the interior,
censored reports from the battle zone.
Always at the ready,
knowing that an offer to move a sofa, pay for lunch,
give a lift from A to B
could be viewed as suspect diplomacy.
Aid implies weakness, an invitation to relinquish,
a misstep, the first bone of independence broken.
I won’t be a burden to you, she declared decades back. 
Just put me in a nursing home when the time comes.
As if that would solve decline, absolve me of my mother. 
I am not a spy from the bureau of aging
plotting a coup d’etat.
The misplaced key, the lost eyeglasses
are mine sometimes, not hers.
I am tired of neutrality, protocol,
of being misinterpreted in my mother country
where I struggle in a language I must learn to speak.