In Preparation For a Time I Will Not Remember ( A poem)
To do lists
To not do lists
Reminders and alarms
Instructions to self
Scribbled in the margins of textbooks
Journal entries
In pencils ,sharpies, pens
Graphite, glitter, chalk, lead
Read, reread, analyzed
And further scrutinized
A few bits circled highlighted in red ink
More notes
More advise
Introspection is not always an invisible process
Post its, Print outs, Polaroids
Pictures, pictures, pictures
A forgotten audio clip
the negatives of memories,
Film, silvery residue on cold chapped fingers,
peeling skin
A secret embedded in the undulations, and its visible traces
I have a continuous obsession with immortalizing words
My words your words
Our thoughts Our feelings our memories
Not for you to remember me by,
Not for the world to applaud after I am in the ground
Or should I say in the air
after I am burnt and drift as endlessly
as dust in the stratosphere,
But for me In preparation for the time when I will forget
Every month my mother
would circle a date in the calendar.
My grandma wrote in her diary.
My father made lists.
Even before I knew what it meant,
Alzheimer’s was more than a dirty word
It was our reality.
Just like obstinacy
Black hair, crooked noses,
Weak bladders. athletic inadequacy
And Depression,
Alzheimer’s run in the family
The first one I survive everyday
The latter I know I won’t
Will you grow tired of me?
Will you grow tired of me?
When I can’t remember that I ate?
That I didn’t call
That its my birthday
That I fear loneliness more than all other things
That my favourite thing in the world
is the familiar smell of your safety
Your scratchy beard
That I love your tuneless humming
Your obsession with farting
How will I recognize you
When your tears erase
the laugh lines on your face
Because of me.
There will be a time
when I will not remember
our favourite lines from Macbeth
Lines I say to myself over and over today.
Because they make me feel closer to you.
They make you seem real
A fast fading dream
A children’s fairytale
The story of the time you killed a snake in our backyard
When I was away.
Did you remember them?
That evening When you could no longer speak
And opening your eyes a smidge
to nod at my desperate assertations of love
Exhausted you completely.
When everyone was bidding you goodbye,
But I was only half there
Already preparing myself to miss you
Promising myself and you that I would miss you well .
And I was making mental lists
of every memory I must write down
as soon as I get home
Every memory I needed to document extensively
Every memory
I will have to fight to protect when,
I become like you,
That evening when I was missing you before you left
When I asked you if you loved me
and you said yes
sounding slightly annoyed
When you were packing your soul within yourself
before you climbed out of your body
Before you flew up,
to be among the stars
Before you rode the ferry to the grey fields
Before you were reborn as a mouse
Before you went to another place
Any other place
that was not here next to me
The last time you looked at me.
When my mind had already left the hospital room
and was hiding out between the pages of my journal
Rocking back and forth in fetal position
Rocking like you used to tell me bears did
During mating season
Denying reality,
Did you think about our favourite lines from Macbeth then?
That last evening when I asked you if you loved me
I had to hear it
External Validation
Has always been my most desperate of addictions.
You were dying
And I was still thinking about me
What I needed to hear
What I needed you to know.
What I needed the air between us
to resound with the knowledge of.
An announcement to the universe
That it was too sound asleep
To acknowledge
The fact that we were both loved.
