To The Old

Your skin like the onion paper
I drew squiggles on with red ink
has developed small brown spots
like overexposed photographs,

yellowed from sitting untouched
in the wooden box under my bed.
The dark strands are an unnatural
frame around your droopy face.

The way you smile is unchanged—
still bright as a canary singing—
a burst of color in the middle
of the grayness of your complexion.

Your stance, once proud and tall,
is now a question mark without a dot,
flowing down to the brown earth
with which you'll soon reunite.

But you have forgotten much.
Sino siya? What is your name?
Remembering has become as foreign
a language to you as English is.

I am no keeper of memories.
When your body follows your mind
into the abyss of what is next,
when I will myself to let go,

you will remain in those places
you have been with me as a whiff,
a half-memory, teetering in between
remembering and moving on.