Diana Darby ** "I V" ** Intravenous

Words and Windows

It’s getting harder to communicate with them,
harder to cross the line between sane and insane.
Harder to make sense out of words,
and windows,
and meals.
They are functioning on broken cylinders,
trying to pedal bikes without wheels.
Combing through memories with hairbrushes and nightgowns.
They think the answer is in cards and pills
and bottles.
What used to be easy,
say dinner,
is now an ordeal.
A decision impossible,
with utensils and knobs as foreign
to them
as if they had been handed tools left over from a NASA mission.
The simplest task,
like going to the store,
has become a maze they are incapable of running.
Mice stranded in a parking lot without keys to hold,
monkey-barring their way
hand over hand with the help of strangers
back to their condo.
Every day
the t.v.
in their living room
gets somehow magically screwed up,
put on a station that doesn’t exist,
like auxiliary.
Then it is left for days,
a black screen,
a mystery to them,
till someone from the outside comes
and with one simple click of the button restores it
where it stays on days at a time.
I fear for what will become of them.
They are the blind leading the blind.
Neither has much more sense than the other.
I worry that someday
someone will come and lead them away,
leave them
like puppies on some dirt road
to wander in circles and die.
And like puppies,
they won’t even know they’re in danger
until it is too late.