Losing His Name

The man sits on the sofa,
reading his newspaper.
He doesn’t know
how to write one to ten in words,
though he remembers
that he wrote poetry,
that the names of the friends he knew
come into his dreams at night.

He doesn’t seem to understand time,
walking into a room
again and again
asking the same question
as if to remind him
where it’s gone,
where he can find it.

Outside of stepping in the office,
he rarely goes anywhere.
Perhaps each new place
is like a spiral that turns away
from where he is,
losing his name
and the places he’s been to
like the numbers he can’t write.