The typical resident of an assisted living facility is an 85-year-old woman. —SBDCNet

Can’t you see her standing there?
Her limbs pressing into the air at odd
angles, bent slightly at her waist, she’s
peering in your direction, her eyelashes
almost meeting each other and the turn
of her lips downward. Her hair is close
cropped, like a boy’s, though when she
was young that was the style, and curled
in little ringlets. Her skin has a translucent
quality to it, bunching together in spots
and stretching in others, her forehead ridged
and her wrists pulled tight. Her hands
don’t look quite right, like there are more
bones than there should be, or maybe
less, fused together painfully or broken
apart, they hold tension, curled around
walker, handles. When you’re old, it’s easier
to walk on your hands, leaning your weight
onto a silver walker. Her bird shoulders
are pulled up almost to the lobes of her ears,
and her knees are touching. She’s pretty, her
weight leaned onto her walker, and scary,
in that she’s a variable, her frown makes
a variable of her. What does she have to be
happy about here, you’d think, if you saw her,
and like me you’d be wrong, but it feels true
when you see her there on her hands,
all twisted up.

m.l. Bach is a poet and heavy reader from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania who was raised inside a personal care home named after a boat. Their work has appeared or is forthcoming in Ninth Letter, Paper Dragon, the Denver Quarterly, and elsewhere.