Category: Inspiration from others

SOAKED


I want you in my home to know you’re not alone 
in those long-shadowed halls paced by perpetually 
lost—dementia scouring their last stains of memory

          more than safe,
          I want you to feel safe
          yet I’m drowning in this 
          deep dank bog of lung

rain sluices from leaves beneath a starless sky
as distant shouts urge me to find my way back
yet I am beyond lost having unwrapped and dropped 
their safety rope from my waist so I could reach you
 
       all my cells replicated yours when you were 
       my sole cord to life—for that I worshipped you 
               till the God, Hormones, ascended

as I stumble over elephantine roots, 
machete through plants so large dinosaurs 
must still exist on this swampy earth,
my lungs match each step's suck of mud, 
every breath a drowning, yet I won’t 
release this taut line between us mottled 
with white ash and blood dark wine nor
understand how your Emmental brain 
won't let you walk or know where you are 
in time, yet provides lucid wit and end-
less memory for the inconsequential

                                    

       years now since I severed and flung 
our rope in your flames yet you remain 
      tangled as worry and seared to my palm
when I reach for you in wake or in dream
      unable to rest or breathe for want of you

Thank you to the editors of Melancholy Hyperbole for first publishing this poem in an earlier version.