Room of Forget by Diane Webster

Rooster crowed … crowed … crowed; 

I dragged … dragged … dragged 

myself awake; forgot I had died. 

 

This room is not my room. 

Perhaps a motel room. 

Am I on vacation? 

Where’s my wife? The bed indents 

only one merry-old-soul form. 

Our picture hangs on the wall, 

but it’s not my wall -- white, 

too white like my skinny legs. 

My pants feel right; my shoes fit, 

but why am I here? Where am I? 

 

Someone knocks on my door and enters. 

 

“Time for breakfast, Riley. Are you ready?” 

 

Riley fumbles for his cane and shuffles 

down the hall to the dining room filled 

with residents looking at him 

for someone familiar. Should he know them? 

 

Rooster crows in the distance, 

but no one hears; no one remembers… 

again … and again … and again. 

Diane Webster's work has appeared in El Portal, North Dakota Quarterly, Verdad and other literary magazines. She had micro-chaps published by Origami Poetry Press in 2022 and 2023 and was nominated for Best of the Net in 2022.