Bloodwork
by Vasiliki Albedo
Menopause, the doctor says, reading my blood.
The stench of bad news like childhood Sundays—
liver bloodying the plate.
Did you say you were thirty?
The examination room rinsed red.
Any family history?
My mother waiting in the clinic carpark,
hair already shed, ovaries cankered,
hands folded over her purse.
Failure throbs in the doctor’s script—
failure of ovaries, the clock’s dry tick,
stopped seasons.
Outside, Athenian heat flattens the day to a sheet of lead.
My back salts the vinyl car seat.
Mother grafts her palm to mine, lifeline to lifeline,
her pulse in my wrist.
Vasiliki Albedo is a poet living in Greece. Her poems have appeared in Oxford Poetry, Poetry Ireland Review, Poetry London, The London Magazine, The Poetry Review, and elsewhere. She was shortlisted for a Forward Prize for Best Single Poem, The Sylvia Plath Prize, The Oxford Poetry Prize, The Bridport, the Aesthetica Creative Writing Prize, and commended in the National Poetry Competition and others. She won the Poetry Society's Stanza Prize, Poetry International's tiny chapbook competition and the Live Canon pamphlet competition.