haiku

Almost the moment I turned 50, my ovaries began petering out. That September, I wrote this Haiku in their honor:

Tiny firecrackers!
Celebrating fifty years
Ovaries go bang.

I liked that haiku, back then in 2005, particularly with its reference to firecrackers -- a nod to my Chinese ancestors and how they liked to celebrate. In the spirit of historical accuracy, I will admit that there is no evidence that our Chinese ancestors actually marked menopause with firecrackers.

It's a pet peeve of mine that some people think you can write "Haiku" by just stringing together some short lines, willy nilly. Even if people try to keep to the correct 5-7-5 syllable form, sometimes the line breaks don't make sense. So you get exasperating creations like this:

At end of fifty
years, ovaries starting to
go bang. bang. bang. bang. 

It hurts, right? It just plain hurts to read bad Haiku.

You know what else hurts?  My bod. Here is exhibit A.

I was going to try to photoshop a connect-the-dot drawing that included all my frontal scars -- the five new ones from Tuesday, the vertical scar that marks Yani's birth, and the two horizontal ones where my breasts used to be. But all the designs I came up with required a terrible stretch of one's imagination, like the way we all pretend that Ursa Major resembles a great bear. Sure.

Instead, this goodbye message to my bits, through Percoset fog:


Must you go so soon?
Sorry 'bout the mutant gene.
Thanks for the great kids.

...although, strictly speaking, tradition says that Haiku should have some reference to nature. So here is a more proper one:

Sacred cave is dark.
Small light appears with the dawn.
Laura bringing meds.