Health
Hot flashes at 3 a.m., brain fog in meetings, mood shifts nobody warned you about — menopause is a transition, not a character flaw. Talk openly here.
The calendar has been empty long enough that someone used the word over. Kitchen. Kettle. Heat arrived in my face as if the year had not counted. I was not in a client meeting. I was not holding a heating pad for a map that was supposed to starve. I was holding a mug and a senten...
The brush held more than it did last winter. Bathroom light, one chin hair that last year’s face did not own. This is not a PCOS chart. This is not a four-minute tweezer appointment I already had a word for. I am not shopping for a foam. I am holding two maps that will not sit in...
They took the uterus. They left the ovaries. They used that as a no — as if leftover ovaries were a stamp that I could not be in it. There is no period left to point at. I was not holding a cousin’s “that will end it.” I was not holding a plastic bag from a night the heat arrived...
Third stair. I sat. The rest of the flight arrived like a day that had already been spent. This is not a wet towel going back in the drum. This is not the hour after a plate. The visit asked about flashes. They did not ask about the stair. Did the tiredness show up as a staircase...
The waistband was honest at eight. By late afternoon the mirror used a word the pamphlet never printed. This is not yesterday’s jeans and a hard front. This is not last spring’s trousers arguing with a bathroom scale. Same clothes. A different afternoon. Did the afternoon make yo...
Keys. Third trip to the toilet before I could leave the house. They said UTI. Nobody said menopause. I was not on a period week waiting on a stick. I was not putting a bottle back in a drawer. I was holding keys and a sentence that only knew how to say infection. Did the UTI sent...
