Poem: In The Nursing Home

In The Nursing Home

Sometimes she thinks we are in her home,
that we were upstairs, somehow,
though the home I know of hers
has only one story.  Other times
we are on a train.  Once it was a ship.
Sometimes she speaks of being stuck,
abandoned by her ride home.
She has been desperate to get going,
shouting that she needs to get to work.
These are better than the times
she is crying, yelling, she wants to go home.
It cannot be explained to her, 
she cannot understand it,
cannot know the necessity,
the reality of things as they are and must be,
but that does not make it at all easy
to do what is necessary.

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