Amanda Earl

Rosmarie Waldrop says, “The meaning of a word incorporates the world into language.” (The Nick of Time, New Directions Publishing, 2021)

What if the connotations of a word make that world restrictive and unbearable?

Feet become infected: cracks, open wounds, brittle and peeling flaps of skin sharp as needles stab each tender foot as she walks, but she cannot stop walking…the restlessness, this must be menopause, the lack of estrogen has caused eczema, she thinks, but this is not yet verified by her doctor, who won’t discuss its onset with her but prescribes expensive ointments.

The aging sentence is forgetful, begins again.

Crone Mother Earth dons the rivers and the skies as her costume.

Once upon a time a woman sleeps in the afternoon heat of August with the air conditioner off.

This is menopause, she thinks as she sheds her red wool scarf, coat fluttering in the cold wind, mind distracted in a valley of nothing, body singing the aches of swollen joints.

Where was I?

How long the river. How long the sky. What she has witnessed. Minerals sparkling in her core, a heart of lava.

Her libido isn’t a made-up story as she’s been led to believe by fabricators of silk lies that cover crones in muted softness because who wants an old broad to be horny, as if it is just plain embarrassing to see a wrinkled lady with white hair always ready, her pink dildo on the nightstand beside a tube of lubrication.

The sentence drops verbs, scattering punctuation in embarrassing places.

She bundles under the covers. let the dreams come to her, they are fragments, glass slippers, red riding hoods, woods full of the howl of wolves, long golden hair hanging down from a turret in a castle wall, spinning wheels, swords, dragons, a needle, spells, secrets, wishes, a wishing well.

Grief is a lifelong process. Grief for the eroded land. Grief for the seafloor creatures of 800 million years past, grief for the sponge, the first builder of reefs. Crone Mother Earth watches as the coral dies from the oceans’ temperature rise. 

She clutches the moody teenager temperament for fear, if unleashed, its anger will destroy, resists an urge to cover her loosening skin in art, ravens on forearms, the word “duende” at her wrist, curling vines on her legs leading to a thicket of indecipherable letters, while hearing the mansplainer in her head: “ you know, the alphabet doesn’t grow on vines,” but if she wants letters on vines on her body, she will insist and she will get her way.

When imbalanced, the sentence wobbles.

She hides her turkey neck with scarves, and while she’s channelling Streep in the Devil Wears Prada, hers aren’t designer: green with bells, red and white stripes which she wears with dresses and granny panties, that’s the insulting term that is used to refer to comfortable underwear and why is it insulting to be a grandmother anyway?

Each part of a sentence is not equal in weight.

She unsilks herself from dreams and slides into three o’clock, the cradle of the day. Rises before the sun, before the sparrows, when the aroma of coffee brings her back to life.

When menopause ends and she has lost weight, she is no longer hot and must layer as early as October in long johns, cardigans and resolutions: she vows to allow the strangeness of her nature free reign.

The subject can be multi-syllabic or carry emotional heft.

Diabetes is a new diagnosis--curves are now poison--curling up to let the blue anxiety engulf her is a luxury she cannot afford.

The aging sentence needs to be kinetic to maintain flexibility.

She can’t even count anymore the number of times she is called “cute” or “quaint,” as if age has turned her into a harmless whiskered creature and she doesn’t like it: is this vanity?

Waldrop writes that “aging sharpens traits that in childhood were blurred by potential and the softness of young skin.”

Too ancient to be the Sleeping Beauty or Snow White of stories, not interested in being woken by a handsome high maintenance prince. In her twenties and thirties, she wore a costume that was too tight, but she squeezed into it anyway. She couldn’t breathe. This was exhausting. She curled into a ball in bed and couldn’t always leave it for days at a time.

A sentence can be dangerous.

On a kink site she’s been on for years, the latest trend is young men with a fetish for old ladies, which is not at all personal, just based on a number, but she shows her body anyway, liking the way it makes her feel to have some attention because with clothes on in public she is invisible, a ghost with vanilla undertones on winter afternoons as the twilight comes on.

Once upon a time, the fires burn and the waters rise and people are afraid it is the end of the world. The woman doesn’t know what to do. She continues to sleep.

Waldrop: “there’s the illusion that syllables can be repaired.”

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[1] With guest appearances from Crone Mother Earth, the Anatomy of the Sentence and the Fairy Tale of Sleep