Sybil Fekurumoh
PCOS/ALWAYS A FULL MOON IN MY DARK ALLEY

A flower bloomed too quickly; it shed its petals; its stem is shrinking.

If I treat my body, would my mind respond with me?

If I treat my mind, would my body submit to me?

How do I explain to the medicine man that there’s a sledgehammer constantly pervading my walls?

Or to the storekeeper, I’m in need of more padded barricades to defend an advancing army?

My body is waging war against itself and I am just a casualty of war.

The easy part is avoiding everyone like a plague. The hard part is explaining my mood, a constant reminder of my helplessness.

There’s no Jesus to touch the hem of his garments. The only garments I own are black. But even the darkness cannot hide the bright red running woman.  I say woman because nothing burns as hot and bright as a woman’s scorn.

This moon blood has no cycle, there’s always a full moon in my dark alley that leaves wolves howling at the anomaly that is me.

The walls of Jericho are breaking into lumps and clods even Joshua would have marveled at this wonder.

My tears are no match for the torrent making a path between my legs. I placed seven stones, one for each potion, medication, concoction, trial and error, diagnosis, and terror. This river never runs dry.

I hoped to die one time I passed out on the bathroom floor. On my tombstone would have been written, ‘’HEREIN LIES MOON CHILD, KILLED BY HER OVARIES, DIED IN HER POOL OF BLOOD. SHE NEVER HAD A SAFE PERIOD.’’ But I didn’t die, I just sat there as a passage for carcasses making way to the ground.


*Originally published in the chapbook To Queen and Country