Language

Submitted by

Laura Callahan

Poem

There are other forms of communication:
a kiss on an unshaven cheek,
the tactile knowledge of two hands clasped.

But we rely on language as a spoken code.
I have two at my disposal;
you have one, now reduced.
You make do with few words,
just as my ESL students must.
They, for vocabulary as yet unacquired—
you, because words once well-known are lost.

But language is not like virginity;
there must be a way to recover it.
Those words are only momentarily misplaced
conventions of speech
in temporary flux,
as syllables rearrange themselves
in the vortex of a cerebral hemorrhage.

When I come to visit you I begin to ramble
about the new apartment into which we have just moved.
When, two minutes later, I comment on how we had to look all summer
for a place to live, you ask, “Did you find one yet?”

I manage not to change expression,
and answer in an even tone.
I wonder if you have noticed the lapse in memory.
But for now your only focus is on the pain within your skull.

You describe how you come in
and out of consciousness,
waking to find points of reference
not where they were a week before.
every familiar landmark vanished.
“I am,” you declare, “all over the map.”

Even here you play the host,
overcome your exhaustion when the visit is over
to raise yourself on one elbow and muster a polite farewell.
I leave your room with haste
and am barely able to make it down the hall
before I dissolve into the impotence of tears.

Notes

Written September 1997 after visiting a friend who had suffered a stroke at a relatively young age.