Husband's Dementia
At 6, she says
At the Y, she says
When, he says
At 6, she says
Where, he says
At the Y, she says
Thanks, he says.
Where, he says
At the Y, she says
When, he says
At 6, she says
At the Y, at 6
she says. Thanks
he says.
Can’t leave a
cancerous wife,
her friend says
that her husband
says. What would
people say, she
says that he says.
When, he says
At 6, she says
At the Y, she says
What would
people say
she doesn’t say. I’m
scared, he says.
At the Y, she says
When, he says
At 6, she says
Where, he says
At the Y, she says
Thanks, he says.
Where, he says
At the Y, she says
When, he says
At 6, she says
At the Y, at 6
she says. Thanks
he says.
Can’t leave a
cancerous wife,
her friend says
that her husband
says. What would
people say, she
says that he says.
When, he says
At 6, she says
At the Y, she says
What would
people say
she doesn’t say. I’m
scared, he says.
September 2025
Valy Steverlynck is an Argentine-American mother, artist, emerging poet and oyster farmer based in Maine. Valy’s poems have been published or are forthcoming in Poets Reading the News, Literary Mama, Panoplyzine, Gyroscope and Cider Press Review. Her visual work has been shown at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art; DeCordova Museum; Fuller Museum of Art; Centro Recoleta, Argentina, and multiple galleries. Her work has been reviewed in the Boston Globe, the Wisconsin State Journal, the Provincetown Banner, La Nacion (Argentina) and Harvard’s Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies. When not tending to her oysters, Valy likes to spend time with family and friends, take long hikes in the woods, swim in salt water and read. (Author photo by Erin Little.)
Art: Ellen June Wright, Diptych #1306, #1509, watercolor on paper