He had not lived with her for sixty years
but her street address emerged from his tangled
atlas of neurons. He shouted it with
confidence during the cognitive tests,
the only thing he’d said in days that made
much sense, even though her street was long
buried beneath the freeway, and her house
was as wrecked as his broken-down brain cells.  

Surely her windows alight at Christmas
had sparked this synapse, the sheen on her stairs
inside the door, the little table-top
tree draped with ribbons, berries, and popcorn,
the curtains drawn back, a fire ablaze
in the grate, the damper wide open.