Time

A memory of a repeated question.

Time

What day is it?
Oh, Gran, it’s Sunday,
just one more to add
to the castoff pile,
the days and weeks
of your ninety-six years,
the times melting to
an amorphous mess,
memories confused
and thoughts appearing
as wraiths in a drifting fog.
Here’s a handhold for you
in the fading world:
the day is Sunday,
and still will be
when next you ask
in your world without tomorrow.
What day is it?
What time is it?
These, your last concerns,
allotted moments trickling now
in the hourglass of life,
each grain of sand falling
to be lost in the mounting pile,
memories abandoned
to their fate.

I never knew you, Gran,
transported as I was
to foreign climes,
returning to find you gone
and I was left, duty-bound,
to guard the shell
that once was you.


Line Count: 33
Entry to The Writer’s Cramp, 3/5/2020
Prompt: What day is it?