it’s all the same poem;
me losing something
and later,  not
remembering anything
as I fall into the dementia
and I think,
some things are hereditary
and some things are a wash
before they arrive.

I wish I would have saved
my dead dog’s hair brush,
my dead cat’s mouse,
some pictures of my friends,
my childhood house
before it crumbled from
the moisture, the squirrels,
the rats and us;
wish I saved anything to
do with us,
I think as I erase
our conversation.
when i’m old I want to be
confused about what shook me
most.

you end up counting pennies
at the end,
penurious again
wrapped in pewter
mansion.   you’re lost
in a giant house
with a giant yard
by a giant lake you
swear contains an alligator,
a few dogs and cats,
a room lined with books,
a nurse to remind you not
to eat your sweater
and dreams of sons,
or daughters if they’ll have
me, and us. trying to
remember us. 

“Grief part 7”