But what does that matter to a perimenopausal single mother having a hot flash, battered by the blush of her blues? She tries not to sweat shivering through her shirt. Worries about her weight, struggling to manage the synergy of dark energy punctuating the flow of less heavy periods. Single moms can’t afford to spend such spotty days complaining. Their kids need them to be supermoons, wearing silvery capes. Blind to bravery’s vision, few realise the fullness of grit or fathom how a black hole is just another name for a heavenly body collapsing under the pull of its own gravity. As real as any other kind of star, but harder to explain. A double dose of pointy sharp shadows slanting perspectives, skewing our view. I know it seems bizarre to categorise parenting without a partner as anything but the collapse of space and time, but relatively speaking, a single mom is a competitive force of nature. A turbulent tempest twisting humanity’s head in divergent directions, wasting resources. An erratic seismic shift in the ways we stretch metaphors, using the science of climate change to bend language like straws.
Irregular periods-
become fickle symptoms
of cyclical problems
Tammy Smith, a social worker and a single mother from New Jersey, draws inspiration from her work in mental health. Her writing has been published in Grand Little Things, the Dewdrop, Ariel Chart, The Esthetic Apostle, Ailment: Chronicles of Illness Narratives, and in io Literary Journal.