Because Poetry

Hello, Hello friends. Just your friendly neighborhood Sam here.

Today I want to share another poem with you. I've been really enjoying my poetry class lately and this week's assignment was to write a sestina. Now, I know what most of you are probably thinking...What the frick is a sestina, Sam?! Well, lovely readers, I will tell you! A sestina is a poem consisting of seven stanzas with a total of 39 lines that follows a specific pattern at the end of each line, in this case each line must end in the same six words, just in different orders, except for the last stanza. The order is repeated each time 6,1,5,2,4,3. Confusing, I know, but I'm bad at explaining things. If you want to know more Google it, people!  Anyway, I was a little afraid to even start this poem when my professor explained the assignment, but once I did start it just kind of took off. It's like how sometimes you'll be driving and then end up at home without any recollection of how you got there. Yeah, well writing a poem for me is kind of like that. I just start writing and by the time I reach the end I don't even remember how I got there in the first place. Be warned that this poem is a bit depressing. It's about my great-grandmother who has been suffering with a form of dementia for some years now. I wrote this for her and for my family. Hope you like it.

Corners

We have watched as the dust slowly covers the corners

of her mind, coating each surface in a gray film.
She forgets slowly, and then all at once it disappears;
names, faces, and sometimes even herself.
She doesn’t remember us anymore, doesn’t realize
the family resemblance between our faces.

Each time I see her I have to remind her that my face
is one she should recognize. She searches the corners
of her brain until she can pick it out again, until she realizes
that I am someone she used to know. The film
gets brushed away and for just a moment she is herself
once more. But it always disappears

again, a few minutes later. Her mind performs this disappearing

act every day now. Her own face
becoming a stranger to herself.
Quietly, she sits in the corner
muttering to herself about a film
she saw once when she was a girl, not realizing

that she is slowly shrinking, not realizing

that as she mutters she is also disappearing.
When you see this kind of thing happen in films
it is much more dramatic, but looking at her face
all I see is confusion lurking in the corners
of her eyes and mouth, as she searches for herself.

I can remember all the times when she was herself;

puttering around the kitchen, waiting for us to realize
that lunch was ready. When our parents came we hid in the corners
of that old house, trying to disappear,
so we could stay the night. A smile on our faces
when we got our way, and stayed up late with her watching old films.

These memories we all play back in our heads like a film.

Remembering how she used to be because she can’t do it for herself
anymore. We let her stare into our faces
just one more time, hoping she hasn’t forgotten for good, hoping she’ll realize
exactly who we are this time. Hoping she hasn’t disappeared
completely, lost in her mind’s dark, dusty corners.

Her mind is all corners now, coated in a film so thick it is hard to break through anymore.

All we can do is watch as she slowly disappears, from us and from herself,
wondering if this is the last time she’ll realize the similarities between our faces and her own.


Thanks for reading this far, I know those 39 lines can be long. 'Til next time.
Love and Chaos,
Sam