Gabrielle Calvocoressi

My Perimenopausal Body Cistern Disappointing How Surprising

Bled all day. Stopped bleeding. Bled some more. Went to the doctor who reached inside the woman body I try to live with: make peace with: but also ignore. Sad tenant, my uterus. One day the tenant turns out to be the landlord. All day I wonder what it means, a clock I know as well as I know anything but also never wanted. And also won’t give up. In the history of my light body it will show I could have been another. The shots, the surgeon’s blade. That freedom. But I hold on. Not out of fear. Well maybe, but also: this body I fought for. Timid skin sack that grew into a kind of magnificence I’d not expected. I tie my bow tie around my neck that’s not quite the neck I want. But still: the neck survived: hours on the floor begging for my life: bent head crying in the bathroom: bent head walking by the boys yelling, hog and dog and ugly as an animal. It’s confusing. I protect the breasts that I live without in my mind’s eye. I look for hours at men’s trousers and kimonos and bleed all day. My mind says:take it out. And though it’s one step closer to one true self I wanted, also I’d miss it in ways I can’t explain. Burnt off scroll. I’m a mirror of a mirror. When I was eight at daycare my friends pulled me aside to talk about a “sex change”: all of us in our Catholic uniforms: Meg, Emily, Nadine, and Brian who got kicked out because of me. That’s later in the story. We drew me in the sand. We planned and wondered how much it cost to be another body. But now? I know my body. I pull up my pants and feel the lack of one thing as the muffin top reminds me of the persistence of another. Me who’s with me always. This pillow that looked over me. Pillow of skin and fat that I’d call Rubenesque. It tried its best. To cover me. So I worry over it. Strange companion. This body that covers me. And bleeds all day without ceasing. I say,Come on. I say,Stop. Like I used to when I’d get too scared of one thing or another. God comes back to find me in the most confounding ways. Me and my body. Who are often not the same.