DEMENTIA
melancholy is the sweetest of the sadnesses to me. it is the only feeling i can remember while i feel something else entirely. my emotions never work in tandem, in the same way that when i’m listening to one song i can’t play another in my head. concurrent feelings coagulate before i realise they are two.
as i begin to unravel, as time and the world and my body collapse on me, i fear i will forget the first lines of keats’ endymion. i’m worried i’ll forget that hamlet called humans the quintessence of dust and he only said it because he was feigning madness but in antic disposition he was more honest than in iambic pentametre and that idea is so intimate to me that perhaps instead of forgetting it i will confuse it with myself.
i’m cracking, i know. i know. i’m done, i’m thinking i’m done, i had eighty odd years and that is enough and i’d feel greedy asking god for more and besides i want to be done before i lose poetry.
i dream or perhaps wake up to a figure at the end of my bed who memorised oscar wilde at sixteen too. the ever present fluorescents make its wool yellow which was my favourite colour before i saw it washing white hospital walls. it is afraid too.
what’s left? it asks me. its rectangular pupils flash. an ending?
i have questions for it too but i don’t ask them.
what is non existence? is one.
another;
how will it feel?
the sheep turns and walks away.
see you tomorrow, it says.
in my room it’s raining. outside, the sheets on the line are dry.
don’t worry, i tell you, you can borrow my umbrella on your way out. you tilt your head a moment, and each eye seems to look at me different.
i want to tell you about the time my dad drove him and i through the mountains, and how tiny my hands look in my memory, held up against the vents on the dashboard. each knuckle was faintly purple even in the warm air. dad didn’t like the song on the radio, i tell you, but he didn’t change it. you smile at the detail. as we turn, turned, a corner the wheels slipped a little on the ice. i remember thinking i could hear him humming along. you like this story and i want to keep telling you things.
i ask if you’d like to see a photo. you nod, carefully. one of your hands twitches against the other. i’m scrolling awhile and in my periphery i see your head turn toward the window. raindrops slide slow down the side of your face, and a damp, blond curl licks the edge of your ear. through the muted tapping of drips against the sheets, i hear a small, sharp intake of breath.
what is it?
you blink against the water droplets.
i’ve found the photo. i tilt the screen toward you, but you don’t move, so i’m alone with my smiling eyes, blue like his, his arm around me, smiling on a slope. all around us are flowers. lens flare smudges the edges of the picture. my feet and legs are bare.
you whisper to me, look.
standing outside my window, still and stoic, it stares back.
how long should one wait for a bus that’s running late? i could get up and walk instead, i think. i could. it would be a nice walk. it’s a nice day today. nice day. good sky. crisp. i’m wearing exactly the right jacket for it. my favourite jacket. long. long is good because my ass looks weird in these pants. i’ve always thought that. some time ago i resolved only to take off my jacket sitting down. it would be a nice walk, i think. slower, though; could make me late. plus, the bus would surely arrive the moment i turned the corner. on the other hand, walking makes more sense than sitting, impotent, in wait for a bus which might’ve passed while i was rifling through my bag. should’ve been watching the road. why wasn’t i watching? what was i even looking in my bag for? i shouldn’t curse myself for this, i realise. the bus is only a few minutes late. nasty coincidence it’d be for it to pass me at the one moment i stop watching for it. nasty coincidence it’d be. just now i see something strange. i’m thinking i should just bite the bullet, walk there instead, when i see it cross the road toward me. it doesn’t look left or right. just trots right on over. such a human thing, i acknowledge, to note the absence of humanity in an inhuman thing. why would it look left or right? what a silly thought. such a human thing. it does look at me. i wonder what it sees. for a split second i catch myself wondering if it likes my jacket. were it capable of value judgement or aesthetic preference, i’m quite certain it would. this idea makes me smile. i smile at it. i enjoy how the sharp wind prods at the wool on the side of its shaggy face. i try to imagine it smiling back. this image unsettles me. then i hear the bus. the driver doesn’t see me, i don’t think, because they don’t slow. as a matter of fact, the bus is going quite fast. i have this thought precisely half a second before i watch the sheep be lifted off its feet and land heavily on its side. it makes no sound as it’s overrun. perhaps it should’ve looked left and right, i think. then i think, that wasn’t funny. unkind to the poor sheep, undoubtedly. i think i’ll have to walk after all. i step right over it. i get some viscera on my shoe. it’s still looking at me, rectangular pupils clouded with cataracts.
i used to be a bookseller.
sometimes, in the very early morning, when even the birds are not awake, i’m still standing behind the counter.
i reach into a box and graze my arm lightly on its edge, retrieving a stack of identical titles. i place them on the counter. there’s a little machine we use to put the stickers on, and it ticks softly as i adjust numbers on dials.
0011 1120
$ 13 . 99
it has a trigger, and i rest my finger there. these machines are temperamental; between each book, i fling it back over my shoulder till i hear it tick. then i squeeze the trigger and let the face thud dully on the first cover.with my left hand, i slide the first book across.
tick. click. thud. slide.
it’s calming. my hands like it. my mind is blank.
tick. click. thud. slide.
the stack is soon ready for shelving.
i move to lift it off the counter and place it aside.
then the lights go out.
a flickering streetlamp casts orange on the floorboards.
straight ahead, kissed by the soft light between aisles, is an animal.
we regard one another.
its wool is so large
it is deformed by it.
it looses its jaws
cries a doleful bleat.
the lights turn on again.
in the absence of a streetlamp’s kindly discretion
the sheep’s eyes are writhing with maggots.
mum is yelling to me.
her arms wave frantic over her hair swept wild by wind, her mouth moves but she’s muffled, i scream back that i can’t hear. the salt water licks my ankles. she points behind me and i turn.
the waves roll forth in a single file line, each larger than i am, formidable, but fraternal, asking not that i fear them but that i regard them, remember their magnitude, steady my legs as they fold in on themselves at the shore. that must be what my mother is telling me: to regard the water.
there is so much which merits greeting, here! the waves can surely wait for once the ribbing of a scallop loses novelty, or for once the crab buries itself back into the sand. mum is scared of crabs. i grab his tiny orange pincer and raise him for her to see, see how i am brave and large, but she must have gone walking, she must be down the shore a little further, she’s not yelling for me, not regarding me anymore, so i drop him.
while my back is turned, something big and grey is floating by. its waterlogged wool trembles, rectangular pupils tilted up, unmoving, toward the sun.
the sheep is not dead yet.
rather, there are varying degrees of deadness.
the sheep is at the end of the line, the end of a meat hook. its dried blood brushes rust on the gravel.
the sheep is splintered, spread across itself.
the sheep is a worker and it is an intellect. the sheep is a lover; an artist. the sheep is a child, the sheep is a man and a woman too.
the sheep hasn’t lost a thing.
the sheep remembers all of it.