I try to remember her name,
scouring up and down the alphabet
like I am looking over suspects in a lineup.
“I know her,”
I tell my mind,
as if this plain fact
will shame my mind
into handing it over.
But the more I grab for it,
the more it slips away,
like a wet bar of soap,
like a tiny mouse.
This is how it happens,
the slow erosion of age,
it’s the names
that fall away first.
Eventually I do remember,
rescuing it from where it dangled,
and putting it back in its proper slot,
and I think about what a friend told me,
who is twenty years older,
Don’t worry about names.
They are just tinsel.
If you still know
how much you love them,
you haven’t lost anything
that matters
at all.