My Father Moves to Forgetting Space by Natalia Zaretsky

His seemingly unlimited memory
was filled with thousands books.
Time zones and his long life pass
and without any visible warning

he starts drifting into another space
where thinner air does not hold
thoughts and objects in their places,
like weightless pens in a spaceship.

Disease, a new willful tenant
grabs a huge part of his brain,
forcing it to shrink and neurons to die,
as if they wear out from long use.

His language and memories
are buried under dead cells,
only a few connective words left,
and he resides in the gaps between them.

His mind now is full of silences,
blissfully unaware of loss.
What does the future hold for him?
the ultimate forgetting of himself?

…and a quiet wait for the memory’s last stop.