For Dorrito’s Every Flavour Mood Beans.

*****

Confused

Some days she is Alice and he is Frank. Some days she can pull and pull and finally see for one small moment. She remembers fragments, names of things. Blanket. Pot. Shoe. Flower. They present themselves fiercely, as if they’d always been there, as if she was herself again.

Others are hidden, deep behind the haze—an older woman, sharp and frowning, the round-faced boy with the soft smile and sad eyes. She gives him a present to please him, but the eyes won’t change.

Blanket. Pot. Shoe. Flower. Frank. Frank. Frank. She recites these over, to keep from sinking.