Friday, March 10, 2017

Alzheimer's by Melissa La Fountain

It is a prolonged and unforgiving fall.

It is a slip through the grasps of a thousand nonhuman hands,
each pulling a thread from a brain that was once so full of memories.

 To hell and back.

And back, and back, and back.

It is like a head-on collision;
 you never see it coming, but once you do, it’s too late.

 It is without remedy, an unstoppable force.
It will peel back familiarity like paper being ripped off walls.

It is the cruelest of all fiends,
looming in the shadows of heredity like a rain cloud hanging over a head.

It is a thief, slithering through the brain
 and taking all that it can carry.

It is false hope,
bringing in small waves of remembrance, then pulling them back to sea.

It is an evil trick, stealing the minds of those who deserve it the least.

It is a vacuum,
sucking the humanity from its victim
 until they are nothing but an exterior holding blank space and white noise.

 It is Alzheimer’s,
a cold-blooded killer. 

2 comments:

  1. This poem is written with a raw truth about an awful disease. Well done! ~ Mrs. Kopp

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  2. My great-aunt battled Alzheimer's. She was a personality, really owned whatever room she was in. When my great-uncle visited her in the hospital towards the end he said, "That's not my sister anymore." Terrible disease, your words on it were moving to me. --Mr. Johnson

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