You led your tanks into enemy territory
never imagining that one day
you’d get lost in the neurons that
criss-cross in tangles that
lead nowhere.
Your thoughts transmorgify into words
that mean nothing to the people
who listen for a sign that
you’re there somewhere
in the muddled consonants.
Your fingers seek the skin of the girl
you wed more than half a century ago;
puzzled and annoyed,
you brush away the gnarled hand
that wants reassurance too.
Your eyes are wide open, almost unblinking
as if to capture even more information
to make up for that which dares
to slip away, eluding you
like your night-blooming cereus.
You come back occassionally and it’s like the times
when you came back from war;
you’ve missed so much that
it’s hard to catch you up
before you’re gone again.
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Dhaliwal, U. Tangles that Lead Nowhere. J Med Humanit 40, 139 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-018-9515-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-018-9515-3