I bleed for the first time in two years. I tell everyone. Someone close to me says, wow, it’s like you’re a real woman again. Amenorrhea means no children, or children if you’re lucky. The Latin translates to no moon. I am a moonless woman. The Pollock painting does not depict me. Often, I think of the infertile wife & the husband who leaves her. How nobody wants to admit they’ve been left. But I’m a real woman now. Someone will keep me. Someone will look past the other things. The insomnia. The compulsion to pick holes in freshly healed skin. I can cook, too. I can clean. I can read to kids at night, even if they aren’t mine.

1st published in Swwim

Lauren Milici is a Florida native who writes poetry, teaches English, and is currently getting her MFA in Creative Writing somewhere in the mountains of West Virginia. When she isn’t crafting sad poems about sex, she’s either writing or shouting into the void about film, TV, and all things pop culture.