"What if Parkinson's was..."
What if Parkinson’s was a disease of lang-g-g-g,
my words would cut off abruptly, unsettled…
I would hear my softest “I love you” clang
like a rock against metal.
I would have to remind myself to write,
as if the action itself was not recursive,
as if muscle memory didn’t learn each night
how to move in cursive…
Flailing fingertips would strike on the keyboard keys
at random, haphazardly and chaotically,
like, “do as you please….”
but strictly mathematically
nothing would add up
or rather,
words would collide, pile up at the period’s stop,
and spill over, farther.
I would get lost in my train of thought…
the last train I caught…
under strain, stretched taut…
all of this pain… for what?....
And the line would quickly tie itself into knots
and tongue-tied, I’d lie in the bedroom gloom
and the rhymes would squeeze in-between the slots
of the window blinds and fill up the room.
And I’d search for words to express myself
to express myself (from myself) to the final crumb
and the page - my cell -
would absorb me whole... but stay deaf and dumb.