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.