Words slip from me lately
like cups and saucers
from soapy hands.
I grope for the names of things
that are governed, like me, by the laws
of slippage and breakage.

I am like a child
left behind by the fast-talking
grownups. A tourist
lost in the blind alleys
of a foreign language.

How will I see my way to anywhere
without my words?

I slam up and down the stairs of our house:
Where are my glasses hiding?
Rimless, invisible as oxygen.
I need glasses to find them.

There must be words left
to go on searching for the ones I've lost

the way the blind man I once loved
found me,
first with his fingertips,
then with his whole hand.