We took him from the locked place
where ‘memory care’ meant being tied
to a chair and parked for hours by the main
desk. He said they refused him ice cream
as a punishment and never gave him coffee
or a blanket. On the phone I heard him yell
at the screamer to “shut the fuck up” then
he begged me to take him home. Instead,
we moved him to a nicer place. It has a sunny
walled garden, his own room and different
rules. “I had the world,” he told me, “now the bed
isn’t even mine and my life fits in a drawer.”
