Dementia

I am nothing. You are right.
I’m like someone who’s been thrown
into the ocean at night.

Floating all alone, I reach out,
but no one's there. I have
no connection to anything.

The closest thing
I have to a family is you, but you
hold on to the secret.

Meanwhile, your memory
deteriorates day by day.
Along with your memory,

the truth about me is lost.
Without the aid of truth I'm nothing,
and I can never be anything.

You're right about that, too.



Taken from Town of Cats by Haruki Murakami, translated by Jay Rubin. The New Yorker, September 5, 2011 issue. Speech attributions removed. Submitted by Dawn Corrigan.

The Pornography of Everyday Life

Last year,
I woke up
in a hotel room
in Amsterdam.

There was
a woman
in my bed.

I looked
in the mirror
and saw
that my eyebrows
were gray.

I saw
that I was
forty.




Painter Alexander Melamid, quoted in Forty-One False Starts by Janet Malcolm (Granta Books, 2014). Submitted by Howie Good.

A Life's Parallels

Never on this side of the grave again.
Christina Rossetti

Synthetic coconut shies.
Whiskers absurdly long.

Give the show away.
Everything tawdry and shoddy.

Was it always so?
Were they as cheap looking
in one’s youth when one loved it all?

Does one get fastidious as one grows
older and the fair
always was rowdy
and dirty
and unappealing?

As we came away,
all Himself said was:
“Our poor park,
how untidy it is.”




Diary of a Sheffield housewife, August 1942. Diarist 5447 in the Mass Observation Project. Submitted by B.T. Joy.

Wardrobe Mistress

My mother is ninety and likes
To wear a nice dress.
But she is tiny.

Size ten, and only five feet tall, she likes
Colour, nothing too clingy.
And needs a collar.

She would also like some nonslip
Ankle boots that are
Size four and a half.

Please help.

Nobody seems to cater for
Small, slim people of a certain age
Who are not terrifically flexible.

Do not want low necklines.
Do not like black and beige.



Taken from the "Wardrobe Mistress" column in the Sunday Times' Style Magazine, 29 September 2013. Submitted by Kirsten Luckens.

Last Act

They came to stay
For days and days
To support me, be with me
At this sad time.

Drove me to the store
Then waited outside
At a respectful distance
From the cash register

They went to the cinema
Made me a sandwich
Giving me space
To be alone

They want to be sure
Everything is organised
To take some of the strain
Like finding the Will.

I have it.
I`m in it.
They`re not.



A conversation with an elderly bereaved relative, 18 January 2013. Submitted by Yanto Cramer.