Abigail Elizabeth Ottley Menopause is Liver and Onions

ABIGAIL ELIZABETH OTTLEY

Menopause is Liver and Onions

Bloody, bold and sizzling rich, sometimes tough and sometimes tender filling up the void in my growling womb with a kick to the stomach like a mule.

Menopause is a hearty meal that leaves a nasty mess in the kitchen. A thick brown sludge burnt on by heat sticking, always sticking to the pan.

Menopause is Madame Wolf who comes loping, swishing and sniffing. Yellow-eyed and fierce in her unspeakable aloneness, her paws swift and sure.

Wolf is savvy, finds water by moonlight. The old trails open up to her. Menopause is clever, all animal instinct. Wolf knows well who she is.

Menopause is a cactus flower. Scarlet, pink and shocking. Also green and lush and cool as desert life must be.

Thrust through with needles she will pierce your heart, make you bleed over and over. But still she will feed you from her store and her waters will slake your great thirst.

Menopause is a day between autumn and winter when the wind whips the sun into shape. The ocean, turning turtle, shows its seething underbelly, fishbone-white and gun-metal grey.

Where this year’s gulls go wheeling and screeching, glad just to be and be airborne. Menopause is a salt-sea savour and the blue haze of a squall across the bay.

But menopause has also been the energy that drives me. Its microscopes and telescopes have taught me how to see.

It is my paper, my ink, my pen, the passion that inspires me, the heat in which I hammered out a stronger, sharper me