Deteriorating

She grasps outwards,

Weak, wrinkled hands slowed with age

Fail to catch the nebulous wisp of a memory.

The disappointment roars but will soon fade,

You cannot miss what you do not know.

 

Though there are no restraints, though there are no bars,

She is bound to this place,

Where the corners are dark,

But the lights shine down like a blade of brightness, cutting you open so everyone can see.

 

Loneliness is not uncommon here,

A family you have forgotten is a family you don’t have,

The treasured moments disappear,

And smiling faces become sinister without the rosy tint of recognition.

 

Her own body refuses her, her brain is an enemy,

And they are inescapable,

They are with her night and day, she cannot leave,

For the body she depends on is a cage of bone.

 

Her skin is frail and her strength is poor,

Her days are numbered and her life is lived,

And yet she is but a child.

Her history is alien to her,

Her family are strangers,

Her body is a danger unto herself,

She is dependant and useless,

She cannot work, or move, or speak, or remember,

But she can breathe.

 

She is a whirlwind of life trapped in in a stagnant vessel,

Her eyes are bright, but her eyelids droop to smother them,

Her lips are moist, but her tongue is lead in her mouth,

And her hours are counting down.

 

The ticking of the clocks counts the seconds she loses,

As her temporal lobe is slowly annihilated,

It is a slow slaughter of her past,

And a gradual murder of her present,

And try as she might, her legs will not allow her to run away from this predetermined future.

She will stop trying.

The outrage will dull in the blink of an eye and she will sit and watch

Meaningless pictures dance across a screen as all understanding of what is happening

Is slowly erased.

 

She will leave this life a stranger to this life,

Alone and taunted with slithers of understanding dangled out of reach,

A frustration will rise within, unbidden, unexplained,

And she will rack what is left of her brain,

She will fight

But for all her might she will not

She will never

She cannot

Remember.