My mother sits and talks to my daughter
Thinking she’s me
Telling her stories of my childhood, the same ones
I have heard all my life, over and over.
She smiles delightedly at my cousin,
Thinking she’s my aunt (long since passed away)
And calls me Mama, before she recalls
That she’s also been gone a long time.

The details of identity blur, are lost, but
We are familiar, beloved, and we belong to her.
I tell my daughter - she remembers with her heart.