Alexander Wolf

This is by a patient of mine with early late stage dementia, who was a poet for most of her life. Her new poems are dictated to me during writing workshops I run at my hospice job. She hadn't written since her diagnosis. This is one of seventeen poems I've written with her so far.

I’ve been doing poetry since I could write but I do think she was my only teacher.

Working with her was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. I mean it when I say you all are so lucky to get even this glimpse at the majesty of her work.

In her words from another poem (not posted):

I am not the only creature watching

All of this,

Drinking it in.

I have a companion,

The cat who sleeps in the backyard

Is watching, too,

desert duo & 3rd life & the cactus ring

i saw somebody say “what if you’re gone and i haven’t become anything yet” and basically that broke me on a random thursday evening

I feel like I'm being scammed.

And I think, in a way, you are too.

For most of my life, I thought adulthood was something people eventually arrived at.

Not an age. Not a phase.

A state. A moment where it just clicked.

A place where you finally knew what you were doing.

The people around me looked like they had made it there.

The picture-perfect couple with matching routines, a kid, and a dog that always behaves.

The single parent balancing work calls and school runs like it’s second nature.

The childfree woman building her career, calendar full, life intentional, like every choice was already made with certainty.

Different lives.

Different priorities.

Different fonts.

But all of them seemed certain.

Until the small cracks stop feeling like weakness… and start feeling like truth.

The marriage that almost fell apart.

The career that happened more by accident than intention.

The dream that slowly disappeared without anyone really naming it.

The years spent quietly thinking everyone else had it figured out.

And suddenly, certainty starts looking like something else.

Something performed.

Something learned.

Something repeated until it looks real from far away.

Because nobody is actually reading from a script.

We’re all just improvising, hoping it holds.

Maybe the scam was believing there was a moment where it all starts to make sense.

Because we’re all just winging it.

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My love, you are like the sun, a supernova made human and breathing and beautiful.

And I want more than anything to be able to stand in the light with you;

To not flinch or turn my face towards the shadows.

But it’s difficult, when you live your life behind slatted blinds,

In a darkened room where no one can hurt you.

(Because all you’ve ever known is the serrated edge of a blade, 

And the twisting gore of a body unloved, unwanted, 

Abandoned more times than can be counted)

i think it would be funny if i drowned in the pool

and you held my body—the only way you'd ever be that gentle with me.

limp limbs and clothes stuck to my skin;

i'm never going to be beautiful or thin, or beautiful, or thin—

your eyes don't roam so soon i'll be getting hit by a car in jean cut offs and a crop top.

i'll wear my worst shoes and i hope you wear your fourth best to my funeral.

i hope you stop by for a minute with your coffee still hot in your hand and your boyfriend in the car with the key in the ignition and rap or something blasting through the cold AC air,

windows cracked open just enough for me to hear it in my coffin—i always knew he was a kind soul, the kind of man that could please you—

please, say you thought of me once in the past year, and if i'm lucky you typed and deleted a romantic love letter in messages ("Wyd") before i remember that you don't check your phone,

not for my sorry sake at least.

this is the kinda thing that makes me want to die.

(what am i known for if not my drama?)

so when i find myself sick in the hospital

will you finally return what i left behind?

bring gas station flowers and all my hair ties, stuck in your (my) roomba,

the one i gave up on wanting when cleaning it got to be too much?

maybe even a greeting card from trader joe’s?

you’d think by now i’d have learned to swallow down false hope with my vegetables,

but i guess not, i guess i still find myself thinking of you

when i hug my mom;

but she’s too short and it ruins the illusion.

i keep you and me locked in a box under my bed

and mutter to myself

maybe you’ll come back to me

and send me stupid Instagram reels . . .

maybe you’ll come back to me

“Boss made a dollar Granddad made a dime But that was a poem From a simpler time.

Boss made a thousand Gave pa a cent But that penny paid the mortgage Or at least it paid the rent