July 30, 2023
This Gives Me Pause
It’s not menopause, not yet, but the blood cycles
recently ceased. No hot flashes, either. I’ve always run
hot and don’t want to think of what might come.
Still, much resides there: pain, discharge, fibroids, cyst, possible
polyp of an unknown degree. I thought I’d be done by now and
done thinking of that one thing. What if I didn’t drain myself from nurturing
so many and instead nurtured myself and a being that was only mine?
What if I trusted when I made that call not to that I could’ve and
would’ve done it well enough.
It’s too late and I’m too tired.
But what if what’s on the horizon is worse than regret?
This barren, but busy womb is sick, and I’m sick
from sadness of what wasn’t and what might be.
___
by Adela Brito
Adela M. Brito is a Cuban American writer whose fiction has appeared in The Acentos Review, Hieroglyph, Litbreak Magazine, Moko Magazine, and The Sandy River Review; her poetry, nonfiction, and arts reviews have appeared in Adelaide Literary Magazine, Closed Eye Open, Cathexis, Storyboard Memphis, Underwood, Snip Magazine, All About Jazz, Counterculture UK, and EdgeNetwork, Writer’s Digest. She received a Fiction Scholarship from Key West Literary Seminar in 2018, an Honorable Mention in the NYC Midnight Short Story Challenge in 2020, among other awards. She holds an MFA from the University of Memphis and is professor of literature and creative writing.