The Sign - prose

Each time the month is upon me and a familiar fullness rests on my belly, my hips, the roundness of my cheeks, I search through memory for signs, for marks of prophecy threading over my breasts or folding in my bowels. For a certain kind of sleep or the need for extra air.

And then the month is here, and my heart exhales, and my bones break and my muscles fail onto them, spent and dried out, another echo, "You have passed the house."

The last is a period. The end of a thought. A declarative statement, precisely punctuated.