There is the quiet hum
Of a T.V. on silent
Sterilized white walls
Everything is so quiet
Yet so very loud
Footsteps echo in the halls
Whispers sound like screams
As they fall on dying ears
Do you know who you are
Or why you are here?
Who ever knows
Who ever will
As they roll
Another one away
Down a long hallway
That they never come back from
He is the one who remains
Locked in by
See through curtains
That cast shadows around him
And thousands of tubes
He is always alone
No one ever at his side
No family
No friends
No memories in the night
To keep him company
In the darkest hours of night
Where the ghosts are so close
And death stands at the foot
Of his skinny little bed
Telling him to come along
It is finally your time
There is just a pile of old postcards
That he bought for himself
What feels like a lifetime ago
From all the places he had been
And said he would never forget
But now he can’t remember
Anything at all
He forgets where he is
And who he is
He is separated and detached
From reality
By what he lacks
Waiting all alone
In a white washed room
With only a T.V. on mute
For company
And a stack of empty postcards
All waiting for the inevitable
The one thing he can never forget
That death is lingering
So very close
He can feel its breath
Whispering in his ear
In a hospital room where Lethe
Swept him away from all he knew
And ever loved
For him there is no future
Or a past
He is floating in an abyss
Stuck between heaven and hell
As the monitor beeps
Slower and slower
The man turns his head
And looks at the postcards
With old weary eyes
He reaches with his weighted hands
Shaking and fumbling
As he picks one up
A little smile on his dried cracked lips
I remember
He whispers but no one hears
As the monitor stops
And a lone tear
Slips from his eye
Staining the postcard
As it falls
Drifting slowly to the ground
Remembered at last
Tags: Alzheimer's disease, death, forgetting, lethe, t.v. hospital