This is a place
where names don’t fit.
All my nouns fall to the ground, in heaps
and the grey of night and day,
of sea and sky, converge.
We sit on plastic chairs
and wait,
in this room full of
impossibly old strangers.
I worry for my family.
I don’t know where they are
or how they are getting on.
The postcard I live on does not have room
for them, so I stay here
alone.
This is the time we eat.
The food is foreign to me;
grey mounds…moist and tasteless.
I smell only cleaning solution.
There are small weapons beside the plate,
for this place is riddled with small dangers.
There are no trees, no birds
in this place.
I think an evil witch has stolen them.
If only I could remember
the spell to bring them back.
I try to recite it, but all that comes from my
mouth is:
dit dit dit dit dit
This is the time we go to bed.
There are bars on my bed.
They lock me into it at night
for my safety…
because this place is riddled with small dangers.
Imagine, being locked into a bed,
alone.
Once, I would have given anything
to be locked in bed with you.
But now I can’t find you.
I call and call your name,
all night from my lonely bed
but you never answer.
I think you have forgotten me.
Or maybe you were stolen by the witch,
who took the trees and birds.
I worry for my family.
I try to summon you
with the magic spell:
dit dit dit dit dit
But this is a place
where names don’t fit.
All my nouns fall to the ground, in heaps.
Alzheimer's sucks. Let's find a cure.
This can be found at IGRT with many talented artists' responses to dementia, and at NWCU where folks are responding to foreign lands. Check them out.
