Alzheimer

It always starts simple

A title of a song, an ingredient

of bulalo, a name of an old friend,

an important event, a birthday -

yours.

When it gets serious, they touch

Your hands and you ask

How is Mrs. ______? And they stare

pitifully into your eyes.

They haven’t been in elementary

for years and you smile

You stare at the mirror for hours

Foreign wrinkles on your forehead

each line for passed decade

you recognize nothing small

remember not even the monumental.

You live like death

Awaiting death.

On your deathbed

The flashback of history begins

Events you don’t remember

At all. Faces whose names are lost.

And without even knowing

you start ending.

The way ghosts never find out they’re dead.