I wish I could love anything the way my mother loves my father.
She confesses her love each time I see her, as though
she hasn’t already told me. She has a name for this love—
her “obsessions.” But you’ve barely spoken to him in 20 years,
I remind her. It doesn’t matter. She’s abandoned all pretense now.
All she has is truth. My father was singular. One light, one orbit.
He was a god, she a goddess. At least in her mind, anyway.
They say Alzheimer’s chips away at your memories
in reverse chronological order, with your earliest memories
the last to go. But my mother will remember my father
even when she doesn’t remember her own parents.
She’ll hold onto him till the end, the way she clutches
a brown couch pillow as she naps in early summer,
the air conditioner rattling, gently shaking the apartment.