my dead friends
walk backwards
at night
time is still
and time reverses

as a child
i watched twin peaks
in the night
crosslegged
on the dog-hair-matted
carpet
with bated breath

i was laura palmer
only younger
and not dead

riding my bike
with bloody knees
on empty small town
streets
because it was more
freedom than home

blue couch
closed curtains
cigarette smoke
in the light of the tv

the half moon table
in the kitchen
held the only phone
the only connection
to the outside world
besides the two doors
that no one ever 
dared to knock on

my bedroom felt like 
an attic 
a slanted closet door
a lead-painted window
that stuck stubborn
in the summer
and winter

the bookshelf
and tv
were the only things
that were allowed
to tell secrets

at a hotel room
i look in a trash can
for clues

next to the staircase
in the street
i see a dead body
zipped up in an
orange sleeping bag

on a dirty table
in a makeshift clinic
i lay naked

i travel in a time machine
that looks like
a shitty one bedroom
apartment

my big grey dog 
is bleeding under a sheet
i have to adjust his oxygen tube
several times

i need to go back to 1987
because it was cheaper
to do laundry

i hold change in my hands
in the middle of an
empty yellow laundromat

time travel is bloody
there is blood everywhere
i am tired of surviving
i cry this again and again
in to the fur of my 
now dead dog

at night
i reach 1987
when i fly over the ocean
the lighthouses 
wink at me
i fail to notice the beauty
​in this

i didn't sleep again last night

i am in perimenopausal
​purgatory

 my rage keeps me up 
 as i remember all that
i have tried to forget

nights sweats
and regrets

my heartbeat
​blooms curses
at all those
who have wronged me

 i think of those times
where hope was a shrine
 and my placating was 
considered a feminine art form
by those who didn't bother 
to see me

my body protested
this invisibility
ovaries burdened with cysts
my uterus harbored fibroids
 as i cried in nondescript bathrooms
and homes where i wasn't at home

my womb 
never stopped
weeping at that miscarriage
that was silenced
because it was just 
another normal nothing

it rained that day
i hid in the clouds

while the  X was busy pretending
that working out at the gym
wasn't just some code
for that  other woman
that wasn't me

my identity 
just air
that slipped
out open windows

i have learned
that hate is an art form
that calls to all
all the wandering ghosts

their unfinished business
is mine
my resolution
is their ticket to elsewhere

my daughter
 at risk of slipping out
a window like i did
going 
unnoticed into the ether

 the planets shift
i watch stars fall at my feet
at 3:00am the dead will
surround me

conjure my future
that chance they didn't have
 hands still fists
directed at the men they knew
that had a part in ending them

dead women
and children
eyes
swallowed in darkness
this what hope is to me
now

 this remaining 
long after your story 
has ended
thinking you can change time

this nightly vigil
just another
 communion with death

follow
those yellow lines
in the road
until you forget

that every crossroad
is just another 
vast desert