She said, “Alzheimer’s.”

“Divided Sky” by Dennis Black is one of the works in the “Art of Alzheimer’s: The Artist Within” exhibit at Seattle City Hall.

She said, “Alzheimer’s.”  (Version 2)

An empty shape wears my shoulder,
yet, if I wait, there comes a moment
a focus, 

pieces of possibility, a right answer—
something. 

Everyone asks for something…always do.

Shifting words wheel
                           answers circle, spin. 

The worst…when there’s nothing…
not even the wheel. 

I wish you could come in…
out is impossible. 

Do you see me? 

                            I’m over there.

Scapes 

All these places
melting as we wake. 

A setting not returned to,
left somewhere after building it. 

Scapes’ drawn down deeply
to a land we won’t remember. 

Where do these go—
constructed carefully in our dreams,
giving answers questions not asked. 

Yet headlong, we climb in, line up to,
or run into a dreamscape
of unmemorable passages,
building as we go.

The Bear in the Cemetery This Afternoon

no whispering prayers

granite jaws and marble teeth
hold other truer memories
mapped in procession 

and now,
a brown granite teddy bear
among the clash and repeat of elders 

there, shiny and new
protecting that child
with so little said

Judy DeCroce, is an internationally published poet, flash fiction writer, educator, and avid reader whose recent works have been published by Brown Bag Online, North of Oxford, The Poet Magazine, Amethyst Review, The Wild Word, OPEN:Journal of Arts & Letters, and a number of journals and anthologies.

As a professional storyteller and teacher of that genre, she also offers workshops in flash fiction. Judy lives and works in upstate New York with her husband poet/artist, Antoni Ooto.