The Sand Hill Review          http://www.sandhillreview.org       2001 November

 

Amnesiac

 

What if I should be cursed

with a soap opera bump

 

on the head?

No major injury,

 

just a swathe of gauze

for my trouble

 

and vacancy

in place of my past.

 

Will I go wild at the loss?

Try to make peace

 

with the strangers,

all of them?

 

I might read my diary,

feel the fiction of it,

 

and jot my parents’ names

inside the cover.

 

Then check my passport

for my middle name.

 

Will I come undone?

Give up? Run mad?

 

Or will I walk, turn each corner

and wait to recognize my life?

 

Amy MacLennan