If it’s true we die three times –
when the heart stops,
when the body’s  buried,
the last time someone says your name –
then rich people with their monikers on buildings
move closer to immortality, which was their aim.
My mother’s name was Deanne.
Thank you for keeping her alive.
That’s what I wanted to say
to her doctor, except he didn’t.
Anne Sexton wrote, Women are born twice,
though I think losing one’s virginity
is less monumental than marriage.
On my wedding night, after my husband
fell asleep – shock of the ring on his hand –
I’m sleeping with a married guy, I saw
each of my old boyfriends cross my consciousness
like numbered sheep.
Not from desire, but letting go, like flashbacks
that happen in movies while someone important,
but not the main character, drowns.
Alison Stone has published nine full-length collections, including Zombies at the Disco (Jacar Press), Caught in the Myth (NYQ Books), Dazzle (Jacar Press), Ordinary Magic (NYQ Books), Dangerous Enough (Presa Press), and They Sing at Midnight, which won the 2003 Many Mountains Moving Poetry Award; as well as three chapbooks. Her poems have appeared in The Paris Review, Poetry, Ploughshares, Barrow Street, Poet Lore, and others. She has been awarded Poetry’s Frederick Bock Prize and New York Quarterly’s Madeline Sadin Award. She is also a painter and the creator of The Stone Tarot. www.alisonstone.info