Dementia Is a Noun

​
who am I are you your mother why can’t we go home

a blue chord is a biscuit is a cup of tea through a straw

how to walk how to swallow why is it so quiet loud

someone is stealing glasses is stealing heat is it cold in here

noun before adjective before verb after muddled preposition

(no punctuation) no memory of today but childhood oh

why don’t you take me home married I never was

children I never had but babies oh those babies

I am a nanny I am a girl why am I here why are you

why are you you who are you why are we here

what are these wrinkles are these jeans are these genes

who am I are you your mother why can’t we go home





Dementia Could Be a Verb


Everything shrank.
We got your milk
in half-pints, found
baby bananas for
your cornflakes.
We bought frozen
dinners for one.
Don’t overheat.
We reduced
the size of your
teapot for an easier
pour. Took away
the fire hazards,
anything trippable.
You shrank, too.
Your gibbous
shoulders waned,
your spine fetaled.
You became
someone else
and you didn’t
know our faces
and we didn’t
know your name.



Dementia Is a Supernova


(fire) hot like that time you reached for the lamb in the stove

(blaze) without a glove

(skyward) and you still have the constellation scar

(star) spanning your left hand like a frozen meteor

(burn) suspended in air as you reach to turn down the thermostat

(combust) but you forget to reach

(incendiary) for now even your arms stutter

(smoke) disremembered movements haunt the air

(dissolve) around us until even the story of the scar

(evaporate) fades to a flicker of all that once was or never was or isn’t





The First Time My Uncle Wished You Dead


I wished the same, unutterable thing.
Let the whole place burn, I thought,
as the doors shut behind us and we
walked slowly, silently to the car,
though not before everyone died
peacefully in their sleep. But we did
utter the words, on the drive back
to his house from the nursing home,
as tears cut down my face,
the raw wound of your anger
and forgetfulness pulsing against
every rational argument for why
I should not be hurt, why this was not
about me, or my uncle, or even you,
but rather all that had disappeared,
all that was taken away, all that was
to come, all that had no balm, no salve.



Dark Matter

​
I wonder what takes the space of all you knew,
what replaced the names and faces, the part
of your brain that knew how to count cards
and make hundreds of meals without recipes.
Did the memories turn to blood, are they still
there, somewhere, churning through the network
of your veins? Or did they disappear? The way
time rights a broken heart, grows scar tissue
over the wound until the heart forgets what
once loved, what once hurt. Or is your brain
now just filled with dark matter? Nonluminous,
unpredictable, unprovable. (Extraordinary.)