I am drifting towards her
like vapor.

Buddha and Social workers teach us
not to assume what goes on
within each other’s worlds.

Regardless, I see me in her mind,
through the haze of disease and
hollowed corridors of her memory.

Is he real? she wonders.
He is my father.
He is my husband?

My name, as I repeat it, comes
to visit, too; the sound
folding into the outline of my body,
bringing me closer to wherever
she might be.

For this purpose, I wear the same
yellow button-down shirt
every time, my hospice badge clipped
to the pocket.

I never know what will find
the switch.

She has remembered my goofy laugh,
straightened up and pointed,
“There you are!”

And for those times when I never arrive,
when the visit ends and she is in one place
and I’m in another

like friends who unknowingly traveled
to the same faraway country,
and are one small curved, crumbling
street apart

or maybe she’s in the Ganges,
and I’m on the shore, head bowed,

I see that we come and go
in phases, happy when we find
each other, in our own mists.