nonagenarian aquarium/i would lose my mind if it existed to begin with

A little tiny monkey in a cage
who doesn't recall my name

I sit on my hands clasped, tongue between my teeth, turning
page after page after page but reading nothing

Words blur into a whir of misunderstanding; dementia licks the tips
of my ears until all we hear is repetitive, useless cries for help

Eyes tear up and threaten to storm; heart cold; hands warm

She believes we are all thieves, captors, holding her in a perpetual nightmare

I try not to care; I pretend to enjoy the story
when in actuality the cut deepens,
the wound- never healed fully-
splits open

With all the fury of screaming 'open sesame'
futilely

The dream, the dream, the dream is American and unholy

The sleep, the sleep, the sleep never comes, the days just run
into one another until once again everything blurs
into a whir

No longer does a divide exist; time, the elements, all of it

Vanished

The moment we stepped into this nonagenarian aquarium
with water draining exponentially through a crack
in the glass every time her eyes blink,

She is suffocating, she is drowning with every inhale
and exhale the oxygen begins to decrease

And reality ceases to mean anything

Save for a game played pointlessly- she is lost and losing;

All mistakes made resurface stuffed in the nooks and crannies
of all these purses; changes create a line like
a tightrope laid out by fate that we teeter-
totter across

As consciousness drifts and hangs noose-like and tight-
ly around our necks

Full of wrinkly flesh

This is a bounced check. This is a notice of 'insufficient funds'.

This is the ending coming undone.