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The Invisible Woman
She stands as a median on the passage of time. It’s that unremarkable state of womanhood somewhere between mutton and lamb. Too young to be helped across the street but too old to invoke wolf whistles, anymore. Or even a back ways glance.
It didn’t slam against her, winding with sudden force. It was a creeping, steady realisation. Something once under-valued had slipped away forever. Youth. The unreturned smiles from strangers. The looking beyond her at parties. Being totally ignored at the front of a queue. Silent screams boiling up inside her.
Now she receives birthday cards depicting arrangements of flowers. Sometimes Edwardian ladies in silhouette. Roses and parasols. Safe, inoffensive offerings of a bygone age, that was before her time.
But she knows that mini-skirted, crop-topped days of summer are behind her. And there will be no more babies. She doesn’t feel the need for a henna tattoo on the back of her hand. Like a scar. She doesn’t see the point of fake tanning. Orange skin. She has started passing these sour judgements on everything. And mourns that high fashion has become an anathema.
She dresses for comfort now, not for show and nobody sees her anyway. At forty-five, probably peri-menopausal - she’s the invisible woman.
