Memory loss was on my mind after my grandmother got Alzheimer's. In this poem I imagine what it might be like if the same fate befell my sweet mom.
"Alphabet Soup" was selected for publication by Quiet Lightning for literary journal Sparkle & Blink's volume 35.
Alphabet Soup
my mother is sixty
and plays tennis and wears curls
lately, the words have started
falling out of her head
we read Emily Dickinson
the sticky letters fling like pearls
when she rounds the stairs
and slip from her nose they
cry help from the kitchen
if I don’t collect them quickly
she wipes them up with a sponge
she has always been deft
with a sponge
when she's on the phone
or is salting the pot on the stove
I replace a few words like
carriage and scarcely
I don’t want to embarrass her
so I recite words clearly and watch
as some cling and others trickle
surmised centuries
I used to look for letters in soup
now I look for words
while she's shaking the salt
the phone still ringing