Metaphors never cease to amaze me. They are often better and conciser at getting the meaning of the most abstract notions across than a simple description of a situation. As flexible molds, they shape and embody our individual thoughts helping us make sense of our experiences in a collective manner. In this piece different metaphors come together to express a sense of womanhood compiled by different experiential states.

metaphors

Men
I had three pens lying around.
None of them really worked.

Emptiness
She started counting her ribs. There, in the middle of the forest. When she came back from her walk, she called immediately her doctor: “I need to have an X-ray asap; there’s something wrong with my insides.”

Mother
She was picking the hairs from the floor, one by one, or in tufts, if they were clustered. With a sense of urgency. The same sense of urgency she had when the phone rang. Wired landline. Darting from the kitchen, running down the marble corridor, sometimes deciding within seconds at the kitchen door which phone to run for, the one in the living room (closer) or the one in the bedroom (more private).

Back to hair picking.

She would often go in absurd bowed circles, like a weird alien dancer. She would let you talk and in the middle of a sentence she would fix her eyes on a corner and, already bowing, she would go there straight to pick up the hair.

What does depend upon hair? I often wondered.

Not anymore.

Voltaire
I will not spend another night with you in my life, but we can still text if you like.

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