We sit at right angles in your living room.
You on your couch
Me on my metal folding chair
   (a constant accessory to my new job. Necessary in the unknown of other people's homes).

You're smiling at me,
and then not at me but toward me as your gaze softens into the halcyon flicker of the pink-tinged memories that glow behind it.

I am an archaeologist.
You are the past.

You are hand-laid brick houses with green lawns built for cookouts and cheerleading practices.  
You are "every-kind-of-person-lived-on-our-street-Irish-Italian-Polish-Je­w-Slovak."
You are the American Dream of your Polish parents. 6 kids in Youngstown. An orange and a discarded evergreen were Christmas miracles.

When people talk about the Lost/Yet/Retrievable/Greatness/of/America

They see the memory of your memory.
Of You.

I envy you then.

94-years-old. Oxygen and original teeth and an endearing pleasant forgetfulness that makes answering your repetitive questions feel like giving you a gift and watching you open it over and over.

You absently grab for a comb, a hardwired ritual of vanity, and ask, "How's my hair?"
The pillows under your eyes become pools as you laugh,
and I love you for your wonderful long life and I hate you, too.

Because you're not me, yet I am you.

The American Dream is milky mashed potato flesh and a breathing machine.
Forgetful and habitually vain.
Foggy and sweet and dying alone in a house, surrounded by knick knacks and stink, watching The Game.

"I used to have copies of the Saturday Evening Post. I should have kept them."