Aunty and the Lost Caves

Aunty lost three pounds of memory, it happened slowly, the clock on her mantle ran faster, the rain began to fall slower. Her cat was a stranger, then an ex-lover. 1300 grams of her vanished in slow motion. The gray-matter remained though it was hollowed out by blind angels; in those dimly lit caves flew two storks carrying two infants forever now circling a cartoon pink sky. At the age of eighty-two she demanded a dog. We bought her an automated one that moved and barked. Eventually though its computer-chip brain failed, aunty did not notice she was by then very busy discussing politics with Theodor Roosevelt. I once asked her what he had to say? She replied that he had confided: ‘the dead remember everything,’ that also seemed sad to me.