Susan G. Duncan

Amnesty

We’ve called a truce
you and I
after lengthy negotiation

and all advantage lost

on your side of the table
you grow silent by slow degrees
by degrees
your recall of offenses dims
by degrees
your disapproval ebbs
your tight lips soften
yet few
then fewer words
emerge

and I counter
with a silence of my own
mystified—
then
by slow degrees
chastened
by degrees
grieving

we won’t achieve
détente now:
alzheimers
arbitrated

and it grants me
amnesty—
a forgiving
in my mother’s
forgetting