This is not the stuff of dreams
nor a world where lovers kiss
forever and fervantly at sunset
glorious and the moon rises predictably
or like old black and white movies starring
dead people, frozen forever on film,
the turn of a sensous shoulder, hands clasping
hands, a thousand emotions possible.
Tell me this is not robbery, nor
nightmarish during the daylight.
A conversation half-finished, disappears.
The names of things and loved ones, absent
or lost somewhere in small moments
such as several or sixty times in
one or two days or minutes.
This is no crime intentionally
and yet, as an accomplice, no jail
or punishment could be so cruel,
so unjust, and so devastating
that death might be welcomed
instead of supposedly prolonged function,
but at what cost?
At what cost and to whom does this treachery
belong? I say the price is the small moments,
taken for granted over the years,
slowly or suddenly gone, the shared laughter,
the night long conversations, and so much more.
He chooses whatever is easier or of some comfort,
as long as I am within sight at home.
Home, a dusty, cluttered shambles, where he feels safe
and I feel vigilant, trying to fix other broken things
because I cannot fix him.
In the rare times when who he once was resurfaces,
we laugh uncontrollably at the mundane:
him, about to eat frozen waffles for breakfast only to discover
he forgot to microwave them and the bacon,
or my various bribes to get him to shower
or cutting his hair, the silver and greyness,
falling in silence onto the kitchen floor.