ALT Dementia Is a New Way to Be Buddhist (poem by Kelli Russell Agodon) Today my mum said she doesn’t remember arriving at my house with a dishcloth, doesn’t remember me telling her my kitten stayed overnight at the vet, that I’d be coming over to help with bills. What she remembers is now. She knows her memory is a ship leaving port without permission, her memory is a cloud she can’t hold. When she asks, Why is everything so hard? I say, I don’t think you’re the only one asking that. When I say, I have trouble with loss, she says, We are all leaving. She adds: I know I won’t be around much longer. So I ask her what she’ll come back as? A pig, she says, then laughs. I tell her I can’t imagine seeing a pig and having to say, Oh, there’s my mom! She smiles and says, Then maybe I’ll return as a hummingbird. Another conversation in the present. Another conversation I will remember alone. From the Academy of American Poets' Poem-a-Day