Diem Perdidi

Inspired by Julie Otosuka's short story, which I read for the first time today and was tremendously moved.


I was in fifth grade
when I learned what
it was to forget

that my grandmother would
sometimes misplace her keys
or lose herself completely
in the space between thoughts

She once drove a car
into the side of
their motorhome when the
space completely seized her

my grandfather screamed for
her to stop but
she wasn't present to

hear him yelling her
name at the top
of his lungs, "Whoa
Tei! Stop, Tei, stop!"

He raged at the
damage, the fear of
losing a woman he'd
loved for 40 years,

and at the space
that stole her a
little more every day

a forgetting that would
not stop or slow
but plowed into her
like she had that

Airstream and that seized
all of us when
she could no longer
remember any of our names

 ---
April PAD Day 21 - responding to another poem