Mekinga

my grandmother devours photo albums like i devour sylvia plath anthologies, mémoire aprés mémoire aprés mémoire memory after memory after memory. she tells me the same story about her first job without a car five times over, looking away to another world, black & white to me & full-color to her. alzheimer's is a language. like french, it is just another part of her. she does not remember conversations from a week ago or to turn over laundry, but she remembers bus rides in the south, pre-1964, white weddings in grey cathedrals that are shopping malls now. i have learned to translate her repetition, the ways sh