Partly Cloudy with a Chance of Dementia by Claire Scott

My daughter says my mind is sliding
words lost at sea, snagged in seaweed
tangled in silt

the round thing you put your supper on

I have post-its on my fuzzy night shoes
my favorite red fruit, the photo 
of my sister, or maybe my aunt

pills from my daughter dissolve on my tongue

post-its on top of post-its, no idea
which is the right one and what on earth
is calamander doing on my desk

living in the shadow of the valley of lost words 

but where was I going with all this? oh yes,
she (Lucy? Layla?) says no more bourbon
but I hide it somewhere, ha! 

but look! there is toilet paper
floating into the harbor
followed by persimmon and potato peeler

I scoop them up in the thing with holes
dry them off and take them home
yet still fewer and fewer words

until I walk out of this watery world
under spinning stars and 
a yellow saucer in the sky

Claire Scott is an award winning poet who has received multiple Pushcart Prize nominations. Her work has appeared in the Atlanta Review, Bellevue Literary Review, New Ohio Review and Healing Muse, among others. Claire is the author of Waiting to be Called and Until I Couldn’t. She is the co-author of Unfolding in Light: A Sisters’ Journey in Photography and Poetry.