She needs assistance to live now.  She’s no 
longer a she.  She sometimes wonders who 
she is, what she’s saying when she gibbers.  
Where is she then?  She visits less often 
than she should but more than she wants.  Last time 
she looked at her puzzled and scared.  Nadège, 
the Haitian nurse, merrily reported that 
she still whips everybody at Scrabble.  
She resented being told; felt it was a reproach.  
She hates it here, the muffled hallways 
freshened with a scent she calls Euthanasia    
No. 5, the pathetic garden outside 
the triple-glazed windows, that weedy 
Japanese maple and sad arc of spirea.  
Here there are only shes.  She puts her hands 
over her eyes.  To this favor she must come 
warns Hamlet, though Yorick wasn’t a she.  
She’s less of a she herself.  There were so 
many men but now that’s all over with.  
She misplaced her libido last year or 
the one before.  La Change.  She whines and knows 
it’s maddening but just can’t help herself.  
She’d gone through it too, so depressed she had
to take pills.  She gripes to Mr. O. 
until he finds some excuse to leave the room.  
Her dentist frowned.  She said her molar won’t 
bear another crown.  She needs an implant.  
An implant, that’s what she called her conscience.
She endures blank days, whole weeks of bleakness.  
She dropped the book club and tried binge-watching 
but lost the threads.  She gave up aquarelle 
class and makes pointless trips to Bed and Bath.
She already has more than enough sheets, a 
tower of towels, gadgets galore.  She bought 
a white-noise machine to get some fitful 
sleep.  Mr. O. did try for a while. 
He talked her into a dinner party.  
It left her in tears and she swore it was her 
last.  Cecilia seemed sympathetic but 
she caught her hiding three yawns.  Her friends play  
bridge, do yoga, swim, read bestsellers.  They’re  
power-walkers, globe-trotters, beloved 
nonies and bubbies, adventurous cooks.  
She envies the ones whose mothers are dead or 
remarried.  She wonders who she was, is 
now. She wonders, Who is she?  A wife with 
a platinum Amex card and a white 
Mercedes?  The childless daughter her childless 
mother can’t quite place?  Just the dissolving 
referent of a peeled pronoun?  She straightens 
and steps into the room.  She’s sunk in the 
big recliner, stiff as a doll.  The TV 
is advertising a tropical cruise.  
She turns, looks anxiously at Nadège and 
asks, speaking for them both, Who is she?