Here is the thing that nibbles at the bone
you can’t recall not its name
this tiny structure casting its shadow
of fog moving through the tunnels of the brain
making you feel in the dark for the name
you were just about to grab before it snuffled
away on silent feet and soon we come to common
words the thing you used last night to pluck
your eyebrows the thing we do when we
say we’re sorry you learn to circumvent
(the brain still cagey even in the thickening mist)
the way we go around the missing words
in circles as though we didn’t speak the language
and must gather many small words to stand
for the one perfect word we have lost
and now we cannot follow a simple trail
of words how to load an app how
to get from here to Susan’s house and now
this year more will be lost like holes
in the fabric of our created selves until
we are each a ragged scrap a fabric
flapping in the whatchamacallit fast
moving air.
How deeply I relate to this poem. Especially the lines “this year more will be lost … in the fabric of our created selves.” It’s the deepest surrender. Thanks for this poem Gail.
I rarely leave comments in these public comment spaces, but I keep returning to this poem. More and more on her rare good days my mother tries to describe to me what it is like to recede from her own life into a lacework of memories and frighteningly alien fragments of the real world around her in the care center. She says she can’t fit them together. They don’t work. Sometimes she wonders who she is. Yes, I finally understand: she wonders it literally.
I read this wrenchingly beautiful poem and I hear her voice as she would like it to be, capturing the world of her experience as she used to do with ease. I just want to thank you, Gail. I know a little bit more now what it is she so desperately wants me too understand.