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.
Elizabeth Oakley Weaver 