Chemo Side Effects: Memory

Where is the word I want? Groping in the thicket, about to pinch the dangling berry, my fingerpads close on air. I can hear it scrabbling like a squirrel on the oak's far side. Word, please send over this black stretch of ocean your singular flare, blaze your topaz in the mind's blank. I could always pull the gift from the lucky-dip barrel, scoop the right jewel from my dragon's trove.... Now I flail, the wrong item creaks up on the mental dumbwaiter. No use— it's turning out of sight, a bicycle down a Venetian alley— I clatter after, only to find gondolas bobbing in sunny silence, a pigeon mumbling something I just can't catch.