Droplets

Sometimes I go through photographs
to make sure I was there.

I was.

I look perfectly normal.

Birthdays.
School years.
Summers I cannot place.

I know I made the cake.
I know we blew out the candles.

I can’t remember.

There was so much medicine then.

There are years
I can see
but cannot enter.

My boys kept growing.

A backpack.
A missing tooth.
Someone calling Mom
from another room.

Droplets.

Never enough
to make a year.

I wonder what they remember.

What they learned
not to ask me for.

Whether they knew
I was still in there.

I don’t know how I escaped myself.

Maybe it was when the medicine left.

The sweats.
The shaking.

The slow return
after years
of cognitive surrender.

I came back.

The years didn’t.

So I keep the photographs.

There I am
beside my boys

looking like a woman
who remembers everything.

I know she loved them.

I know she made the cake.

I know she lit the candles.

I can’t remember being her.