the unhappiness of women

the strangest lesson learned
is that although the years
of this life slide by
with increasingly alarming
speed,

the succession
of nows
from the birth cry
to the death rattle
is never-ending

our brothers ignore it more readily,
distracted by their ambitions
for fucking and power,

but my sisters and I
spend our moments
searching for a place
that does not exist

an old friend,
(wife and mom),
called yesterday
to tell me she finally
asked for a pill
to make it go away

I took a similar pill once,
swallowing each night
fifty milligrams of
optimism and pliability
as my savior

somewhere in a colorado
wilderness, my word-sister,
unmarried, childless, free,
sleeps under the crescent moon
with a shelter dog and a loaded gun--
calculating the cost of independence

deep in the desert,
my blood-sister
settles into a one-bedroom apartment,
finished with the task of raising three men,

their father no longer with
the woman he walked out on her for--
she wonders, what's next?

& I am still on these damned plains
still spoiled, still hungry,
still looking out a window

seeing the four of us
our men, our babies,
our refusal to submit to
the daily catastrophes,

blood pounding through worried veins
all part of the same
beautiful misery