Connie’s Reviews > Beginning Middle End: A Novel > Status Update

“Of all the organs, the uterus is the most Sisyphean, always cycling, tirelessly weaving membrane over membrane in its concave pit, always starting all over again. When menstruation comes, when the copious release of matter begins, the uterus begins to shape itself slowly back into an empty space. I sense it, that vacuum, sometimes just a hint of it. Other times, I know it, entirely, with vertigo and with fear, the pit I hold. I would like to look inside myself and feel what some hypothetical archaeologist feels before excavating ruins: possibility, future. Instead, I see only doubt. But maybe doubt is another kind of drive, a different form of energy, internal, molecular, a potential energy that grows in silence, swells, and becomes. Doubt is like endometrium: matter in the inevitable and circular process of becoming, giving. It doesn't make anything, but it is there to be made into something. Or there to be left alone, palpitating.”