“Memory Care”

Published in The Magnolia Review

By Jennifer Christgau-Aquino

at first it held hairpins 

and pennies 

tucked into the nape

her brain 

                             missing

spaces

read between the lines now

walled 

time whipped

clean eyes

standing blank inside 

vessels, passages, crescent cookie recipes, 

her babies                 fingers on the rosary       

ask

is anything lost

or just never found?

with piano playing and  

crossword puzzles

            and garden book 

varieties of

opened       pasts

unfound

confound

tessellate 

separate

or just hold hands 

and feed on AMC and 

     see n n

      in between now and then