She tells me I am already gone by Lou Freshwter

The new nurse wheels me into the theatre. It isn’t easy to navigate the small space between the stage and the front row of seats. She turns my chair until she’s able to fit me into place at the end of the row. Sixty-years ago I was an actor. I controlled the emotions of rooms like this. Now I cannot even control one hour of my life. I am trapped in this body with hunched shoulders. Rusted wire hands covered with skin that tears like nightmare rice paper. Watery eyes, washed out eyes. Bones that never stop humming with ache. Muscles that hang there, dying, saying no. A mouth that is always dry, choked with dry. Without moving anything except my eyes, I am able to see a woman. She is perfect. Her hair, straight and blond, like light. She tucks it behind her ear, and I see the small pearl earring she has chosen. Her sweater scoops just below her collarbone, that most beautiful part of a woman. She looks at the man next to her. She smiles and looks down at her fingers and she begins to move her fingertips around her thigh, like she is tracing letters there. She looks towards me. But she does not look at me. Then she looks at everything around me, but not at me. Usually I get the small smiles women give old men, like we’re stuffed animals, no longer predatory, not really alive. But she won’t even give me that.

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