my heartbeat blooms curses

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