Poem on Dementia - The Cockney Bard

I Once Was

I sat looking at someone I knew I knew, but somehow I know them not. Each page of each day has lines that diminish one by one. You are not you anymore and I not I. I look in the mirror of time and relate to so little. The I that I use to be is not the I that I am now. All that is me is coiled in a spiralling oblivion of what used to be. My mind races with thoughts of what I am to you. Expressions seem the only way you know, but know not, of what I think, feel and am going through in my slow descent to death. Make me know, you know I know, touch me softly on the brow. Love will still be there long after the shell I become. For you, are you, and I am me, individuals who once shared a laugh, a tear, a cuddle. Now look at me, vacant, absent, no longer there. Cry not for me, as I no longer need, my time has come, you must go on. Letting go is life's despair, so say goodbye to the I of now, but not to the I once was.