The Brooklyn Rail

I had a dream about my genitals
sliding out like a piece of chewing gum

Plop into a toilet’s swampy waters

Imagine my surprise as I stood there

Naked since my underwear had been complex

Necessary to remove and my dress

The organdy layers fanning up at me

Laughing from a hook at my face looking

Down at the pink fallen flesh floating there

Weighty and then the automatic flush.

Saving myself the way one would do

I reached down and caught it held it in my hand

Washed it off in the sink patted it dry

I thought it would be easy to fit back in

That it would click into place settle

Like my diaphragm behind a bone

But what I couldn’t tell was which was the front

Which was the back and where did it really go?

Details I would certainly soon remember

So I wrapped it up in toilet paper

Put it in my purse and dressed without it

Returning to the party flushed unsexed

Invisible clutching my purse in a crowd

I wandered around drinking cheap champagne

Trying to find a doctor I could ask

If this was something I should have expected

I wanted a scientific answer

No one had warned me not even my mother

The queen of menopause goddess of the change

- Someday your genitals will just drop down

You could be anywhere so be prepared

I carry an airtight container with me

Just in case and darling you should as well

It happens anytime after forty one -

She could have offered practical advice

I would have accepted it with grace and poise

Hot flashes thinning hair fallen genitals

- Your most creative time - is all she had said

menopause and the mystery was for me

To discover like sex something beautiful

The way she had described it when I was eight

Sex that was now in my purse with lipstick

And car keys credit card receipts money

Items I may have lost or forgotten

Stolen borrowed reclaimed