she sits looking out her
bedroom window trying
to remember
WHEN!
when did everything
come apart…begin
to DISINTEGRATE
perpendicular this life
with that other
universe
where others
remember
WHEN!
parallel lives
opening up inside her
shattered mind
yesterday it was
all CLEAR!
her four walls
like everyone else’s
painted beautiful
portraits of children
on walls to
recount memories
times of laughter
now fading
becoming something
WHEN!
reminiscent becomes
faltering steps
eager to see a
likeness that
goes with a name
CLEAR! as
crystal
unlike the clouded
looking-glass
where someone else
appears before
her eyes
WHEN!
disguising features
thought she knew
them another
time apart from the
kaleidoscope
broken colored glass
she knows now
WHEN!
will become as distant
as the broken pieces
of her mind
a heart no longer
disturbed as
there will be
nothing to remember
WHEN……
© June 2012 Renee Espriu
I have met so many people in my life with either a mental illness or simply a break down of the mind’s capacity to remember. My aunt, now many years gone, was a fun loving, intelligent woman who for years ran my uncle’s business and whose memory in later years vanished with the onset of Alzheimer’s. This once very independent woman, who did so much for others, ultimately went to my cousin’s to live so she could have someone take care of her in her decline. I was not privy to these difficult years, in which she lost touch with her reality, but often wonder how it must be and how very close we all could be to such a reality such as her life became.
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