Wednesday, January 18, 2017

My Mother Doesn’t Live Here Anymore--By Shelly Blankman--United States

My Mother Doesn’t Live Here Anymore

Her brain is scavenged now by the scarab beetles
of Alzheimer’s, leaving mom drifting into a starless
night, her sky blue eyes clouded, her words soft and

scrambled, anagrams on a page that can’t be turned.
memories gnawed away... marathon games of Scrabble,
listening to Sinatra swing, gushing over old movie stars,

like the time she met Dick Powell. I wonder if those moments
are locked somewhere in the prison of her mind. Her land is
strange, her language foreign. She is a child, wanting a cookie

she cannot name or reach. Her rehab is her crib she cannot
escape, no matter how hard she tries. I leave her screams, leaving
bloodless stab wounds of a scalpel. The demon of disease stole

her brain, her body, but wears her face. She doesn’t live here anymore.
She doesn’t live anywhere. Not the mother I knew. And when the
darkness swallows the sun and her lids droop over her glazed eyes,
I kiss her goodbye, perhaps for the last time. Her midnight is unending.

She’ll never know I was there but I will. I’ll remember the smell of tea with
honey, the warm sheets that smelled like her, the cool fresh air on my face
as she sang with Sinatra...and I smile through my tears.

Shelly Blankman and her husband are empty-nesters who live in Columbia, Maryland with their 4 cat rescues. They have two sons: Richard, 32, of New York, and Joshua, 30, of San Antonio. Her first love has always been poetry, although her career has generally followed the path of public relations/journalism. Besides Whispers, Shelly's poetry has been published by Silver Birch Press, Verse-Virtual, Ekphrastic: writing and art on art and writing and Visual Verse.

8 comments:

  1. Dear Shelly,
    With you all the way on the ravages of Alzheimer's.
    Your poem conveys your heart's pathos for your loved one.
    Thank you.
    Michael


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  2. Alz is a dreadful disease--robbing cared for and care-giver of solace

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  3. I enjoyed reading your work, very moving...

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  4. Shelly,
    A great poem. Welcome to Whispers if you are new, a warm welcome from me even if you are not...
    Yours truly,
    David Fox

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  5. You have written it very well here--the stranger who wears her face, and the heartbreak of that.

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  6. This poem brought a lump to my throat Shelly, I am with you all the way here.Thank you for sharing with such sensitivity.

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  7. Shelly,

    My heart was and still is pounding with reflections and memories as I read "My Mother Doesn't Live Here Anymore." I'm trying to hold back the tears that this beautiful poem is provoking in me. I truly enjoyed this. Thank you so much for sharing it. Continued blessings!

    -MJ (www.tgbtgpublictions.com)

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  8. Shelly "My Mother Doesn't Live Here Anymore" is good writing.
    A great take on Alzheimer's, or maybe just growing old.
    The way you scribed this sticks in ones head.
    Thanks for sharing.
    Yancy

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