checkmate with Alzheimer's

 

robert margetts

CHECKMATE WITH ALZHEIMER’S

 

 

Another piece gone.

Another memory shoved into the cold abyss.

Left, right, forward

What does it matter.

The rook slams a check

onto the bone‑white board.

The Queen watches,

hands shaking,

tears soaking her dress.

Her mind flickers out.

Her husband drifts into the fog.

Everyone she loves dissolves.

She calls to the knight.

He sits high, useless,

counting pawns

as if numbers could save her.

Her memories rot,

shift, vanish

like pieces scraped across a cold board.

The King stands naked.

Bishops gone.

Lines broken.

What would Bobby Fischer do?

Bishop to E6?

It doesn’t matter.

Every move is dead.

Checkmate is inevitable.

Dementia doesn’t lose.

The Queen can’t guard him anymore.

Her mind is a pit,

a frozen snare of fear.

She fights the board,

bleeding dignity,

but Alzheimer’s cheats.

It always has

and always will.

The King stares at her,

trying to remember her face,

her name, anything.

His hands jerk.

His legs fold.

He steps left,

forgets why,

steps back,

tries to hide in plain sight.

The rooks and the Queen

scramble to shield him,

but the silence swallows everything.

Memories fall.

Pieces fall.

Chess is cruel.

Alzheimer’s is worse.

Step away from the future

if the past is already gone.

robert margetts

what is the meaning of this poem?

Alzheimer’s destroys not just memory, but love, identity, and the shared life between two people — and no amount of strategy can stop the checkmate.

The meaning of my poem is the collapse of identity, love, and partnership under the slow, merciless advance of Alzheimer’s; told through the metaphor of a chess match that cannot be won. It’s about two people who once knew each other intimately, now trapped on a board where every move is predetermined by the disease, not by strategy or will.