Menopause is a Metaphor

It is late in spring
when the evening sky

is a swollen orange
and the night flowers

whisper their small
languages to a city

of wind. When
the horizon

is a drawing in black
herringbone, I am a stone
painted pink.

Immovable obsidian
lives inside me,

even my imagination
is a dying orchid.

The light
of the moon
is not a light,

but a love note
to a field
of cypress trees.

*

Natalie Marino is a poet and physician. Her work appears in Bitter Oleander, Isele Magazine, Leon Literary Review, Rust and Moth, The Shore, Variant Literature, and elsewhere. Her chapbook, Memories of Stars, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press (June 2023). She lives in California.