Many nights I go to sleep 

a teenager and wake 

up as an old woman. Mid-

life plays out in dreams 

of messed-up travel: 

taking a train between cross-

city airports, having booked 

an irrational segment 

of a transatlantic cruise,

I placate myself with cliches

about journeys. Some semi-

cancelled celebrity, on the verge

of a comeback, always wants to marry

me and I don't know how to say

no, and I'm usually pregnant 

and don't know who’s the father,

so I spin and weave like a fairy

tale or pioneer heroine, sheets

winding around my shoulders

until dawn unravels the sad aubade

and I gasp in relief, even if it's rainy

and nothing suits for breakfast,

and by noon I'm middle-aged again;

by quitting time I'm 21 and ready to club;

and when the kids

ask me what it's like

to be my age I say

it's like every other age.

Tempered by Midwestern weather 

I understand the need for layers: 

the nuanced taxonomy of outer 

and underwear mapped

in infinite combinations. 

I know it’s one thing to be optimistic, 

another to be prepared: these aren't zero-

sum binaries. And waiting isn’t passive,

but brims with the paradox of patience, 

which, if lacking a grain 

of its opposite, is meaningless.

There’s a difference between

January and July, but less so

October and April, and more 

than you’d think this and last

October; this April and this April.

Those white Christmases 

and balmy Easters of child-

hood?—a montage of seasons

and eras blurred and blended;

no memory possible 

without the necessity 

of forgetting.

A woman like that is not a woman, quite.  - Anne Sexton

I have flouted and flaunted   

what scraps fell to me by fate;   

a stranger to discretion;

thrown enemies into a tunnel of love-

less fire, projected my hostilities 

on the innocence of nature. 

A woman like that is a waste of space.

I have been the selfish type.

I have labored to stay barren

despite the cost, and rolled 

derisive eyes at those who bred.

I have slept with orgies of cats,

attained too many academic degrees,

bought shoes that could have shod

the less fortunate. A woman 

like that has no right to exist.

I have been the selfish type.

I have let you buy me dinner, or a car

with no chance of giving anything back.

Secure on my high-horsed pedestal,

I've girl-bossed and used my rank

for gain. A woman like that gives woman-

hood a bad name. I have been the selfish type. 

I've scrounged my points 

to find the warmest resorts,   

foraged the tastiest cupcakes, 

charmed the fixer-uppers 

with a trashy wrap. A woman 

like that never claims to be other

than what she is: the selfish type.

I have Ubered to my destination,

glad to be so driven. I always leave 

a generous gratuity, I pay my taxes,

take my meds, do what I need to do.

A woman like that knows who 

and what she is, and you are, too:

we selfish types.