Premenstrual Syndrome
– by Sharon H. Nelson
This is the time of the month when you find
your husband’s a fool,
regret having children, wish
you had studied music, architecture, law, anything but how
to get the potatoes, green beans, roast, and rolls
all hot and on the table together.
This is the time of the month
when your patience has shrunk
to the size of a pea.
This is the time of the month you discover:
the house you live in is unsuitable:
you’d rather throw out the dishes than wash them;
you’ve always detested ironing.
This is the time of the month
when things you usually overlook
irritate you to screaming;
when things you don’t usually notice
take on proportions that drive you to frenzy.
This is the time of the month
when you stomp
out of the house,
drive aimlessly round the city,
just to get away from the noise,
the electricity created by lives
rubbing up against each other,
and also,
to remember
the feel
of your own flesh
on your own bones.
This is the time of the month
when everyone’s wary,
when they smile slyly and shake their heads,
as if only they knew the name
of the dis-ease that afflicts you.
This is the time of the month
when doctors are kind to you,
prescribe tablets and capsules and liquids and rest,
are in sympathy
with those who must
live with this anguish, this tension,
this unfortunate physiological response to a genetic program,
that seems to provoke
witchery, bitchery, shadow, and shades in otherwise perfectly respectable folk.
What if
this is the time of the month
when your perceptions are sharpest?
What if
this is the time of the month when
the illusions you hug round you,
warm and comforting and thick as a rug,
flap in the chill wind of seeing
what actually is?
What if
this is the time of the month when
the normal, the usual, are revealed
as the lies you tell yourself
three hundred and thirty days of the year?
What if
this is the time of the month when
the tears you haven’t time for well up, overflow,
and you know, as surely as you know
what time of the month it is,
that your husband’s a fool,
you regret having children,
you wish to study music?
What if?