Literature
portrait of rosalie
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