These are the rough beginnings of my latter days

These are the rough beginnings of my latter days
when eyesight fades and letters blur;
when strength begins, like water on the seer,
to leech away;
when memory becomes a series of lacunae
and names that were once ready on my tongue
are strangers, ghosts,
some haunting foreign words astray,
locked up,
so vague and inaccessible to me.
This is the murky edge of older years
when I increasingly forget why I have come
into a room
and stand all puzzled and beguiled in unfamiliarity,
adrift within a space no longer mine,
when I leave water running in the sink
for hours on end
when I no longer feel the need to shave
or buy new clothes
This is the milepost in my span of time
when now I find myself avoiding mirrors as I rise;
the man I see there, when I am brave enough to look,
is surely wearing some disguise.
It is not me, that person there
the one who’s looking back upon myself.
But looking back upon my severed self
is all I ever seem to do within this entrance to my latter days.