When I Told Her
When I told my mother she has dementia,
she said that of course she’d get dementia
because her mom had Alzheimer’s but
she doesn’t have that yet because she remembers
when her mom had Alzheimer’s, and when
I told her that Alzheimer’s is actually the kind
of dementia she has, she told me Alzheimer’s
and dementia are not the same thing
and she repeated that she doesn’t have Alzheimer’s
yet because she remembers everything,
like that time she and her mom were leaving
the diner and her mom looked up at the gingko trees
and asked if taking ginkgo supplements
would help her memory and my mother
told me that her mom was smart, even then,
and knew something was wrong. Then the stack
of old photos my mother was holding fell
out of her hands and onto the floor
and she didn’t notice and she told me again about how
her mom used to throw crumpled newspapers at her aides
but she is not doing that so she doesn’t have dementia
or Alzheimer’s or whatever this is, she said,
gesturing about, the branches of her arms lit on fire
while I sat on the couch watching the fire spread.
WENDY WISNER is the author of three books of poems, most recently The New Life, published by Cornerstone Press (University of Wisconsin Stevens-Point) and named a finalist for the Foreword INDIES Book of the Year. Wendy’s poems and essays have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Spoon River Review, Passages North, THRUSH, Verse Daily, The Washington Post, Lilith Magazine, and elsewhere. Wendy is currently an Associate Editor at Rise Up Review.