I want to remember you
from before the awkward
afternoons in a dayroom
where I would sip coffee
and you would say things
that embarrassed me
and I would walk you back
to the elevator

I want to remember days
when conversation spun
beyond our careful questions
into a dialogue
that could have changed your life
until the day it could not

The days when you would tell me
of childhood wartime horrors
and of the vivid dreamworld
that sustained you then
and to which you knew
you someday would return

I can’t help but remember
moans with which you greeted
and spoke to me the last time

moans that were your only way
of saying you remembered
and that I was with you
in what had become
your only world