Alzheimer's in a Doctor Who World

A Poem for My Mom

With Doctor Who returning tonight, I thought I’d share this poem about my mom that uses the Doctor and his world for the Alzheimer’s that kidnapped her in her final years.

Where the Time Lords Hide Their Essence

Containers multiply
like fevered rabbits. Like a crowd
assembled to watch
Petit above Lower Manhattan.
Containers that tell her stories. Store
for her the soul and psyche
leeching her into a her world.

They come in here
and move everything around.
Takes canisters from cabinets.
Searches. Perhaps
she is The Doctor. A lost
incarnation. Perhaps, she will
open the lid. Retrieve the self.

Even now, with her settled in
the home, we find them, filled
with things we do not recognize,
bits of data lost as she crosses
Into her parallel world.