Dementia

A photograph
of my mother smiling
and holding a child
used to comfort me from its perch on the wall.

A monochrome,
it used to tell me
that even when I couldn't love
knowingly,
I was loved.

And though I didn't remember
the moment of that photo,
that moment was etched away
in my mother's heart
along with thousand others.

It was comfort knowing
the past that is me
was loved and remembered.

I'm close to my mother.
I smile to her and
I smile with her.
Somehow still
that woman on the wall
is more my mother
and the child more her son than
we are now.

My mother forgets.
To hold us close.
To care for us.
To sing us a song.
My father called and said,
"your mother forgets everything."

With every wisp of memory
lost in the puzzle of my mother's brain,
I lose every bit of me:
every bit of me that I couldn't remember,
every bit of me that I might remember,
every bit that I was comforted to have
safe in my mother's keep.

Now,
everyday my mother forgets
and I wake up a little less of her son.
A little less of her scent
embraces me.

That photo on the wall shifts.
It slowly decays.
The woman on the photo remembers
to smile,
but not who the child in her arm is.
And some days she remembers that
she is
and she is being held and carried
by a middle aged man.
But who he is,
we can't remember.