Diana Darby ** "I V" ** Intravenous

Mental Warfare

You start wondering
if you were in denial
all the time
about the Alzheimer’s,
and the gambling,
and the fighting.
Were you too busy
at college
studying zen,
biology,
your professors,
to even notice
the decline,
fall,
lapse
into the other world?
Now he calls
six, seven, eight times
a day
repeating
the same stories,
the same numbers,
the same resentments.
They were the same stories,
numbers and resentments
you grew up listening to
when you were three,
ten, twelve, twenty-two
thirty-six,
but now they come faster and harder
over and over
like gunfire in a war.
Over and over
dodging bullets
getting hit in the back, legs and arms,
cowering down
under the covers
pulled up
over your head
and you start to wonder
when did it happen?
How were you blind to it for so long?
And are you next?
But mainly you wonder
has it all been a lie?
Has it all been a lie
you didn’t see through
until now?
Who he was?
Who you were?
What you thought you had?
And now,
where do you go to escape
when there is no escape?
Or not even a now?