The Next Wave
by Julie Jeanell Leung
Julie Jeanell Leung, The Basal Temperature Chart, digital collage, 2026 Courtesy of the artist.
The Next Wave
Julie Jeanell Leung
AUG 2026 | Issue 54
FLASH
I don’t know how the heat begins, I only know how it rises inside me with intensity, pressing along my arms and into my face, seeking release, breaking and then returning again. Dante did not possess ovaries, but I feel I must be condemned to suffer in an existence similar to the one he described in the Inferno, these agitating cycles of burning and longing. The sudden warmth awakens me at night. I lie quietly in the bed I share with my husband, staring into the darkness. Downstairs, my close college friends sleep on the sofa bed in the living room, their baby in a play pen. Doctors told me at 16 that I’d need help getting pregnant, and ten years later, the fertility specialist prescribed Clomid to help me ovulate. Hot flashes are a known side effect of this medication, but something I don’t know at 26. A staircase separates me from our friends and their child whose existence I envy. They have a baby already, while I feel I must have accelerated through decades into a hell of early menopause and insomnia. But I don’t want to tell anyone that we are trying, and I certainly don’t want to wake our guests, so I wait silently in the dark, anticipating the next wave of heat breaking my body.
At the end of each Clomid cycle I call the doctor’s office to see if I should come in for a test. Are you bleeding? Are you having a miscarriage? The assistant asks over the phone, her voice sounding unprofessionally sad for me or perhaps I project that empathy. Again and again the Clomid is unsuccessful: according to the blood tests, I never ovulate. My womb is empty and my body is warm, my sleep and my life disrupted by desire I keep secret from even close friends.
In a photo from this visit, my husband holds their baby, his hands on her belly, helping her stand on our dining table. He is wearing his favorite orange shirt, and I see the playful delight in his smile. The baby in his hands has bare legs and enormous eyes. Captivated by the cuteness, I also spiral down the secret sadness of my inadequacy: I can’t give my husband what we both want.
Months later, on the last cycle of Clomid the fertility specialist said he will prescribe for me, my ovaries will finally release an egg. Soon I wake at night to nurse my own baby girl. But the body always remembers the disruption and secrecy, along with the grief and envy in the darkness.
Twenty-nine years later, I’ve moved to the Mojave desert to be closer to my daughter, driving for hours in 100-degree heat in order to get more glimpses of her than I do on Instagram. It is hot outside and it is hot inside. Still a jealous creature, I want her time. I am defined by jealousy and heat. I have always wanted so much.
Julie Jeanell Leung received her MFA from the Rainier Writing Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University. Her creative nonfiction has appeared in a number of publications, including Bellingham Review, Blue Lyra Review, and Grist: The Journal for Writers. Her essays have been selected as a Finalist for Best of the Net and as a winner of the Living Earth Nonfiction Prize.