Two Dementia Patients Share the Memory of Water
Two glasses of water
wait to be touched by hands and lips.
The water itself remembers the taste
of Fixodent, the salty funk
of being swallowed into a body
so blind to itself
that thoughts have dimmed to patches
of slowly shuttering lights.
It is then that the water is their memory
it is then that the water can drink them.
The water also drinks
parents, grandparents,
multiple layers of children,
but only in parts, only in shallows
and shadows.
Two Alzheimer patients
look upon each other.
both reach for a glass of water at once.
Now the water
can fill-in, recall and paint mind pictures.
They begin to talk about people
that they both remember
as if the past was always
just one shared glass of water.
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