My grandaunt Roshni is wrapped in Alzheimer’s
Her daughter tells me it began from isolation
An impoverishment of social interaction
The disease was an infection of loneliness
It’s easy to forget if little is worth remembering
There was little she cared to keep
Memories slip out the back door
Roshni refused to meet her old college friends
She seldom picked up the phone
She stayed in a one bedroom apartment with her books
Rimbaud, Camus, Vonnegut
She lived in a world of papyrus and ink
Her only human companion was her maid
Who silently cooked parathas
Over night a mental dam broke loose
Now Roshni talks to the walls
All chatter is undigested memory
Chewed upon forty years later
Her mind metabolizes old wounds
She rages spontaneously
(Only towards men)
She says “I love you” for no particular reason
She smiles largely with her yellow jagged tooth
A chiseled testament to time
Roshni is named the mayor of forgetting
The family has become irrelevant to her
Sometimes I am her elder sister, the Marxist
Other days I’m her neighbor from Shanghai
I can play any character in her home theater
The village cripple or the Hindi teacher
I am nebulous and vague, not even a distant memory
So I become everyone
One morning during the summer monsoon
We are trapped indoors
Rain pounds on the window like an angry past lover
I sit in the kitchen and read
Roshni stands behind me
She recites every line of the book's poem aloud
“Sylvia Plath” she murmurs
There are some things that touch the interior
There are some things we cannot forget
There are some things buried too deep inside
It is reserved for poetry
We call it, poetry.
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