This is a poem inspired by working and caring for our beautiful residents here at the Jura Care Village. It is so easy to dwell on the dwelling of sickness, to stagger on the sadness of once upon your time. But it takes true enduring compassion to look with eyes of love; to see the candle light within the dark room and to know that no amount of darkness in the Universe can put it out.

A tearing tornado takes me to the center of your mind.

From the outside I see tumultuous chaos,

As I enter; Blind.

Ripped and yanked,

I loose my center.

My up goes down,

No idea of what is right is left.

Within your storm I hear a shout,

STOP!

Then silence.

I look all round but see only mist,

HELP!

“Who’s there?”

What happening? Mind you. Me, Struggle, Who? I.. I… I…. I don’t….. I don’t. Someone! Did you… see? STOP! What? I want… to go… go and… I what.

Words melt, speech wilts, thoughts stumble.

I follow your lips as she moves to keep up with a word that twists around itself so profusely,

Bursting forth in intermittent rupture,

Your words so eagerly seek that pleasurable rapture,

Agonizing dissection awaits them instead.

When rapture becomes rupture, don’t say it’s all in your head.

Because this tornado takes it’s toll,

toiling to tessellate the the the tilting tesseract of mind my mind.

I pretend. Pretending to be me. The me that once understood what you are… you’re staying… saying.

I nod my head. My head nods me. Onto smiles and that one sentence I cling. That one lie liner that lines the connection of my falling identity. 

STOP!

What that was that? A glittering glimpse of something I remember.

Your smile held my hand,

Showed me a moment I no longer understand.

“I love you!”

I smile, rising above all you think I am.

Amneasia is not who I am.

Your heart knows me as something much different.

I am the whisper behind the whispering wind,

I am as intangible as the emotion called love,

I am that I am that I am. And so are you.