Hysterical

Funny how the doctors called her 
loony when she complained of pain 
that pulled her inside out
for ten days every month.
Maybe they advised she close
her eyes and think of Harry Truman— 
this was the forties, after all, and a war 
was on; women simply had to go
to work. She speaks of sudden 
bloody rivers that flooded
the carpeted floor. She tells me 
how her patient mother scrubbed 
the hand-me-downs with bleach 
but could never make
the fabric pure again.
Silly of her to wish for better, 
or less, or more, when everyone 
told her the trouble would pass, 
that she should stop being
so hysterical.

It passed. Her belly met 
the knife when she was only 
twenty-eight, when the ordinary 
excess turned to flowers
that never stopped blooming.

Afterward, 
 until she dies, 
she buys clothes
fearlessly,
unfashionably
wearing white
  even after 
Labor Day
 and before
Memorial Day 
Looking back,
she quickly 
folds her past 
into fabric older
than youth

A teacher and writer for over forty years, Karen Kilcup is the Elizabeth Rosenthal Professor at UNC Greensboro. Her collection The Art of Restoration (2023) received the 2021 Winter Goose Poetry Prize, and her chapbook Red Appetite (2023) received the 2022 Helen Kay Chapbook Poetry Prize. A second chapbook will appear in days, and Pine Row Press will publish her second collection, Feathers and Wedges, in April 2024.