The Menopause Witches

SHORTLISTED - HEROINE WOMEN’S WRITERS PRIZE

COMING SOON in HEROINES ANTHOLOGY VOLUME 6 - WITCHCRAFT

I still dream of them sometimes, their soft bellies, big laughs, chin hairs. I see them converged around kitchen tables, hands melting over Greek coffee, overturned cups strewn across the benchtops like misshapen rocks on a Laconian hill. Spilt grains tell of days to come: a ring on a finger, a snake in the shadows, a friendship unravelled. Some days I imagine their foreheads bore eyes.

In my dream I sit cocooned, my thin legs dangling, toes scraping a floor thick with the crumbs of their wisdom. Black hair tangles down my back, matching the tresses of their past, their greys the shades of my future. I share the brown of their irises, the prints of their hearts. They surround me with winks and nudges and cheek-pinches and sideways glances. The men, my father among them, are out in the fields, in their cafes, flicking their komboloi beads, spreading their legs, taking up space. But not this space.

“She’ll hear about it one day, anyway,” the Menopause Witches say, shrugging. “Let her stay. Best it comes from us, best she hears it here.”

 “The men don’t know a damn thing,” one of them tells me, leaning forwards with her thumb and forefinger pinched below a raised eyebrow. “Let them think they do though Areti eh, and the neck will move the head.”

The Menopause Witches laugh. I laugh too, scrambling to understand, craving the knowledge in their skin. I try to catch it as it leaks from cracked lips and tough tongues. I stretch my legs, matching the way they move their aching hips and bones…