📃 Daily(ish) poem → 00323 ◊ God, Diagnosed With Dementia ◊ Beth Oast Williams
God, Diagnosed With Dementia
You know he forgets names,
where he left the keys.
Some days floods cover
land he says would never drown
again. He hears my prayers
then asks me to repeat,
calling it a refrain. I abstain
from meat and wine for forty days
hoping to reset my soul.
I try not to use my lover’s name
in vain. And yet I curse
the man who forgets my birthday,
forgets to pick up after the dog.
Senescence is such a sonic
word I hate to discover
its meaning. I hate
every diagnosis that dares
doubt to double over,
bruising bare knees.
—Beth Oast Williams
—found in Invisible City (Issue 5)
[Note: my apologies for my inaccurate formatting of A. E. Stallings' recent poem. You can read the poem with the proper line breaks in the archive.]