Alzheimer's

Katherine McLeod Searle

She never ran
Sunlit
Through unruly grass
Gleaming lover in hand.

She never laughed
Fruit juice kisses
Dripping from swollen lips.

She never nuzzled
Crooked in an arm
As hot sweat
Cooled
And throbbing stilled.

Then, her mind raged
With images of taxi-driver rapists
And the inherent dangers
of air-conditioned movie theaters
—Rumbled with Christian don'ts,
Patently prohibitive.

Now, her body,
A shriveled shadow
In a wheel chair,
Quakes at the after-shock
Of her smallest action.

She shrieks in starts—
Not as bad as the hand-eaters
Not as offensive as the compulsive obsceners—
Locked in her own hell
Of dead relatives wandering
Through sightless eyes.

One name repeated incessantly,
Plaintively,
A Jimmy none of us
Can identify.

Katherine McLeod Searle