037/100 aka 177/365

MENSES
Word Count: 430

On Wednesday she went to the mall, giving in to her natural instinct to follow the light. She saw a mother with too many children, a bevy of nuns, a flotilla of teenagers with purple-pink hair and wanted to buy them all belts.

She intended to go to the library Thursday but went to the bookstore instead where they served coffee and chocolate chip cookies, the low-cholesterol kind. The trail of her wound around town, up and down stairs, speeding up on the straight-away of sidewalks where it looked to the experienced eye like the shimmery silver mark of a snail.

She was mid-cycle and ripe, the scent of her driving men mad, she suspected. Friday’s walk around campus curled leaves, left flowers weeping with green envy. Three young men fainted, their hands cupping their privates and twitching.

Saturday was the day she stood poised on the cusp, an egg wandering her womb seeking a soulmate. She decided to go to a morning lecture on Shakespeare then to a buffet lunch of the Society for Interesting Historians. She spoke to as many young single men as she could. Inside her, the egg bounced off uterine walls with excitement, then listened and rolled with despair.

She left the luncheon unmated and strolled the small town sidewalks, poking her nose into furniture stores and men’s clothing boutiques. She treated herself to a dinner at a mid-price-ranged French restaurant. Disappointed, resigned, she went home alone and took the edge off the chardonnay with a late night latte and slipped into a cold lonely bed.

Sunday service, a soccer game at the park, two hotdogs and an early evening bicycle ride came up empty. Inside her, the egg fell asleep at the mouth of her womb, holding on to the cushiony walls through the bumps and stones of the ride.

On Monday she went through her normal routine, classes and coffees and salads for lunch. And each day followed the same. She focused on literature and chemical compounds while her egg dozed in its crumbling home.

She felt the sharp pain of its turmoil, its hopes bleeding away. Grumpy and cramped, teary and not knowing why, she dreamt of babies and big red balloons. In a few days she felt better and again, found herself at the mall where she saw an old man with an un-fully-zipped fly, a gaggle of pink and mauve little girls, their fingers buttered with popcorn, and the same number of orange-haired teens still badly in need of a belt.