‘Adrift off the Shore of Alzheimer Island’ by Cheryl Skory Suma

She stumbles, a newborn in the insidious haze. Her sunset on life’s shore is now crowded with unfamiliar moon faces. Once, she enjoyed travelling to new places, savouring unique twilights. She’d been a supporter of the arts, an attempted poet, a connoisseur of life. Now, she is a traveller lost. The music she once loved has discoloured within. A spiralling whirlpool, muddled and hard to hear. It has taken with it her recollections. Of lilac dreams. Of eyes that knew how to smile. Of those who once asked her to dance. 

“Adrift,” she whispers to no one. 

Each night she lives variations of the same dream — alone in a rowboat as she weaves stories and poems to share with the sea. She knows she should pick up the oars and return to shore, but they are rebellious in her hands. So instead, she drifts. In the day, she continues to flow sideways until the strangeness fades, then tries to navigate the emotions that flow stronger than her dream’s tides. She imagines they crawl up to grasp her brittle ankles, to drag her pain along the shore. This is how she floats: down congested passageways filled with anonymity and caregivers that do not know her.