The decorators have left for good
The packet withers in the bathroom cabinet.
She knows that most women after decades
of hieroglyphics on the calendar and condom diplomacy,
gather pills, caps, towels, and fling them in the dustbin
‘Good riddance’.
But she misses the womb’s monthly husbandry,
an excuse for pit bull rage at shop girls’ shoddy service,
gorging on Snickers and crisps,
even the niggle of mosquito cramps,
until the first flow has the body sighing with relief.
Her twenties forfeited,
She has scurried though education and career
expecting to win a husband like a prize
in a competition she hadn’t entered.
Until at 50, she finds that her body has deducted every month
from the allocation of fecundity she thought infinite,
so Roberta and Oliver will always be fiction .
