But the key is a tangled cobweb of highways
My voice sounds like a cottonball
Where the words are buried deep in a wreck
Called dementia.
A haze of ammonia scents your windowless room
I cradle your withered body
Someone whispers you are a prisoner
Locked behind stolen memories
Packed away on your dusty bookcase.
I glance up to your mantel
Littered with photos of a joyful past
A redhead of twenty-one on her wedding day
Full of future, full of hope.
Moments of lapse started at fifty
Laughed off over sips of chamomile
Until cobblestone roads led to dirt paths
Now sans a name.
I remove your dusty trophy to bring your past closer
Sparking the fire with my only match
As you grab my hand and say,
"That's me!"
(c)Carolyn Sanford
published in Skipping Stones 2007
Mindworm Press, Chesapeake, VA
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