Menopausing

11 March 2026

i stood on the shore and saw the beast felt its breath bathe me in sea smoke as my hair slapped around my face like seaweed every part of me alive— maybe for the first time.

the ache in my hips felt fundamental, the sandbanks on my chest proof of the ebb and flow, my seashell toes and hermit bunions, weathered by tides into wisdom— or just the ellipsis of survival in the dying light…

the sturgeon moon swam through the dark, as i hung the last of my eggs as stars, made a wish for eternity, a pause of salty breath— before i waded into the water, determined to wave, not drown.

Notes

The last line references Stevie Smith’s poem “Not Waving but Drowning” (1957).

about the author

Adele Evershed is a Welsh writer who swapped the Valleys for the American East Coast. Her work has appeared in Poetry Wales, Comstock Review, Modern Haiku, Avalon Literary Review, Black Bough Poetry and Flashflood. She is the author of Turbulence in Small Spaces (Finishing Line Press) and has a forthcoming poetry collection, In the Belly of the Wail, with Querencia Press. She has published three novellas-in-flash—Wannabe and Schooled (Alien Buddha Press).