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Ode to my Great-Grandmother’s Dementia

  • Sarah Yang

Ode to my Great-Grandmother’s Dementia

Ode to my Great-Grandmother’s Dementia 1920 1920 Sarah Yang
It's only because you adore her that she began mistranslating her only sky, submerging every truth like a footnoted cloud. Every memory sleepwalks across her skin, an ice cream truck dinging in the middle of a desert. She's safest with you, still the young girl thumbing her favorite paperback beneath the cherry blossoms, its thousands of pink syllables. Look how accurately she's forgetting. She's lovely dreaming facedown, streaking her fingers through the grey fur of every field. Her mouth is her most reliable rumor. Each thought she has is suspended over her the way a hot air balloon eventually hits the ceiling. You've made her into a language that she can't help but outlast. Her cut out name is yours to keep. Before she sleeps, you turn the lights off in all the faces in her photographs. How could she stay, knowing how you'll hoard her the way a carousel holds each galloping horse hostage.

Header photograph © Tara K. Shepersky.

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