Coastal Erosion

I

My father’s hospice bed sits in the middle of the living room

like a shrine. He doesn’t leave the bed anymore.

I wheel my mother to his bedside. She leans in,

says I know you’re hiding another woman in the house.

Where are you keeping her?

He yells for me to take her away,

back to her own dying.

II

When we tell her he died, she sobs, then asks when he’s coming home.

We do this daily, for a while, tell her the story of the funeral again

and she forgets again, until we stop telling the story of the funeral.

Now she thinks he’s left her after 70 years, stole the kids

and sailed to the other side of town.

But why did he leave his shoes behind? And his coat?

He must be cold.

III

We lie on her bedroom floor looking at the ceiling.

She slid from my arms as I tried to transfer her

from wheelchair to bed, barely conscious,

another mini-stroke. She has them every day now.

She lies there in a diaper, frail and broken.

I lie next to her in exhaustion and defeat,

wait for her to regain consciousness.

IV

Is that the doctor’s lounge, she asks, while pointing to the closet.

They can flap around all day but they can’t pull wool from my eyes.

She doesn’t know this is her house, my brother says,

so it makes no difference if we move her. But she knows

the view from the window that has changed seasons

272 times, and that the hallway always leads to the kitchen,

even when it doesn’t.

V

I ask her if she wants to watch Wuthering Heights,

her favorite movie, which we’ve watched three times

already this week. She thinks it looks interesting,

so we watch it again for the first time.

VI

Today she thinks she’s in my apartment,

refuses to sleep for days, says it’s rude to sleep

when you’re a guest at your daughter’s house.

She wonders about all the people bringing her medication.

Do they have a key? Do they make you take drugs too?

She suggests I talk to the landlord, perhaps change the locks.

But mostly I should get the windows fixed

because the ocean is rising.