IMOGENE’S NOTEBOOK
A poem
We are the sum of all our conversations,
the held hands, the shared glances.
In the arithmetic of us, love is the constant.
The quiet corners of the mind
where we once were vivid and alive,
echo the hush of forgetting.
Decline, a thief in the night,
steals the hues of recollection,
leaving only grey and white.
Identity unravels, the mind falters,
each forgotten name, each lost detail
a piece of self that silently alters.
Who are we, if not the sum of our memories?
What remains when the treasury empties?
The human condition, in its fragility,
faces the mirror,
and in the reflection,
a question without an answer.
Does the essence survive
when the archives
are no longer accessible, no longer alive?
Yet, in this space of loss and absence
a profound truth quietly breathes.
We are more than the stories we remember,
more than words in the ether.
For even as we fade and falter,
the moral compass holds us together.
In the eyes of those who love us still,
our identity endures.
In the touch of a hand, the warmth of a smile,
we find that which truly defines.
For memory is not the sole keeper of identity,
and even in decline, a light shines.
So, cherish the moments, the now and the here,
treasure both the joy and the fear.
In the end, it is love, not thoughts, that remains,
unwavering, a constant, unchained.
In the whispers,
in the acts of kindness sown,
our truest self is found,
forever known.