Synkroniciti is pleased to welcome back poet and writer Anne Stewart from Minnesota with “Conundrum,” a touching poem that was one of our “Identity” finalists. In it, Anne contemplates the nature of identity in the face of cognitive decline from Alzheimer’s Disease, which her husband experienced. He asks her “Who am I?” She tries to be encouraging, but she is unsure of her answer, wondering if he is perhaps “a figment of someone/ misplaced/ with my glasses and keys?” It is a tender, simple poem of four stanzas of four lines with the elegance of a snowflake, belying its depth. One of the reasons cognitive disfunction is difficult to discuss is because it brings up questions about consciousness and the body that reveal doubts about who we are and how much of our personality is due to physiological and chemical factors. As caregivers, we hold onto the hope that the person we know and love is in there somewhere because the chance that we might be abandoning them is too awful to bear.
Read “Conundrum” in Synkroniciti’s “Identity” issue, available here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/. Such brave vulnerability.
Anne Stewart, a multi-genre writer, was the caregiver for her husband who had early onset Alzheimer’s. She lives in northern Minnesota where the wild flora and fauna of the surrounding Superior National Forest, to her delight, transgress on her space and often find their way into her poetry and prose.