Menopause.
A time to pause
from a fascination
with men
and the grey flannel cologne left on my sweater after an embrace,
and how they don’t think about the same things,
and how their thighs feel in tight blue jeans.

It seems less important
as it once was,
and I begin to wonder
what it was that I just
had to have that man for,
that made me give up
my own judgment in order
to silence disagreement,
that made me think his desires
should count more than mine.

And I pause,
my body pauses,
from the cycle that has
run its course for 30-some years
and I look at who I am
and I know.
Now it is I know.