Competition

Second Prize

Alzheimer's Dialogue
by Sue Bailey

 Husband
Batteries of tests confirmed
the reality of my blackness.
Parts of my brain have died and this necrosis is spreading,
transforming my intellectual integrity
to dark withering night.

Your words bombard me
in some strange 3D onslaught –
you think I’m deaf but words fly in my strange brain maze
of abnormal fibres – meeting only dead ends –
‘neurofibrillary tangles’, the doctor observed –
sounds so beautiful
but inside my head,
my world is shrinking to black knots.

This thief, Alzeimer wants more
and roams hungrily
through this dull opacity.
I cannot remember how to tie my shoes
and in this new territory
there are only strangers.

Wife
It came so stealthily,
insidious and furtive;
and I made excuses
for him, for me, for us.

Sometimes a primal howl
erupts from me – a vent
for the gathering maelstrom
of pain, loneliness and injustice,
but then in the encroaching dark
I am but a whisper,
making deals with God –
anything but this.

Your endless repetition wears me down,
erodes my confidence –
monotonous dripping;
then I find a new way
to sound excited, as though
we have just met.

Yesterday’s memories are in another country –
the borders closed today;
no embassy here, no identity –
no ball of string or crumbs to follow.
Will it be tonight, you turn to me
and ask me who I am –
and as the blackness spreads
I cannot answer and you won’t care –
the words diffusing – lost almost
As they left your mind.