the crickets say everything,
as if they returned this year
just to tell me
what i forgot.
as if they return
every year
to remind me
what i keep forgetting.

a squirrel broke the
bird feeder.
how strange,
it was supposed to be
squirrel-proof.
they would leap,
trying again and again,
but the birds
just laughed.
now,
the birds don’t call,
and they don’t
send photos.
a squirrel broke the
bird feeder
and I stopped
connecting.

we’ve felt humidity break
and tongues tasting
of rich garlic
rain which cooled
and didn’t pull us apart

eyes to the east,

(and yours, westward)

how do the echoes sound?

i have an old accent.

the mirror must seem empty;
a line cast into water
in which
i no longer swim.

then we would run 
and be free 
our words would become a song
an endless song
of just a few words
we have lost ourselves in words
when just one will fulfill us

you are old now.
this is how
it happens, right?
all those years of working
just leading up to a couch
and a blaring television.
you hold long wisps of white hair
and eyes that look but don’t see.
your mind goes out like the tide,
it drifts off somewhere.
in that place of pause,
that place of stillness,
you ask how i was feeling.
in two decades, you haven’t.
for twenty years, you’ve looked at me
but have never seen me.
now, with your fragility
and mortality watching you,
in a small room
with a loud television,
you ask how I am feeling.
but I think you see a younger
version of yourself
tucked somewhere in me.
“how are you?”
it is in that moment of lucidity,
in the stillness where
the delicate place where alzheimer’s
has lost its grip,
where I am just a mirror.
“how are you?”
but it isn’t a question for me.
you are asking,
‘did i live? or
just exist.’
but the tide goes out,
a stillness returns,
and you resume existing.