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State of Dementia

Poem [1]
September 14, 2009 [2]
Mary Damon Peltier [3]

You wake without your passport
in a foreign city:
jet-lagged, not sure of
the day, the time.
You have the wrong clothes,
the wrong money.
You do not know the language,
the way to go home.

On the street, people rush about,
busy, important.
They jabber over your head.
You need a bathroom,
don’t know how to ask
in this tongue.
You have to
live here now.

Mary Damon Peltier, a freelance writer, lives in Sharon, Mass. This poem is thirdrunner-up in the Foley Poetry Contest.

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Source URL: http://americamagazine.org/issue/707/poem/state-dementia

Links:
[1] http://americamagazine.org/sections/poem
[2] http://americamagazine.org/toc-past/2009-09-14
[3] http://americamagazine.org/users/mary-damon-peltier