You used to ignore me so beautifully when you were here

swallowed whole by the videogame presence, the music, your mood

always somewhere else to be, always someone else to see

You used to ignore me so beautifully when you were here

When your omnivorous presence had no more sustenance to feed itself

you moved on from my husk, laid me on the shelf

moved on to other satellites that bask in ignorance

of the inevitable event horizon

my dusty shell remnants had enough to feel relief

such relief! In the abandonment, such peace in the dust, forgetting

such natures as yours must

come back to the eaten meal, to prod and pry for

any last scrap overlooked

You used to ignore me so beautifully when you were here

alone, I almost forget to fear

I do not have these words anymore

that flowed, that danced their way

across the dappled floor

crippled, yes, chipped away stolen

like marble frieze

decorating someone’s hearth on foreign soil

No matter. I am the maker of marble, of the frieze

Of the floor and the dappled light

the leaves that diffused that light

the breeze that moved them that my light would keep moving

the way that I will keep moving

the sun across the sky

you can have the pebbles you prized

TFW he confidently asserts I can trust him not to gut me in a divorce

when he’s spent three decades carving me down to shards

Happy Mother’s Day, he says, I’m sorry I didn’t plan anything

That’s okay, I reply, I’ve already got something set up. I learned a long time ago you didn’t have planning genetics.

(what lies heavy between us is, neither do I)

But you shouldn’t have to and

Maybe my childhood twisted me up too much to be good at this also

my brain isn’t healthy right now

uh huh

It’s also cultural, I say cheerfully. Men are taught they never have to do this, and anyway,

the job always belongs to the person who cares about it.

Winter Is Here;

Spring Is Coming

with a sword

and fire.

you have to wonder about a man who will cry on the shoulder of the woman he’s hurt, asking her to comfort him about how badly it makes him feel to have hurt her, to be hurting her, to plan to hurt her further in the future.

it’s something to know that it is all somehow my fault: I didn’t make love when I wasn’t feeling loved, didn’t comfort when I had no one to comfort me, didn’t be the magic appliance that gave all and then gave more and then gave out and needed no maintenance to keep going, so the lack was not brokenness but withholding

seriously, how does that work?

still wondering how a divorce could possibly double an income, grant a magical apartment where he will somehow heal himself and forgive himself and be magnanimous in his generosity toward himself, how a divorce is going to make him twenty again with no abandoned wife in the rear-view mirror, no children dusty from the speed of his escape.

he sloughs off his conscience so easily

he claims the blame without shouldering the responsibility, turning the snake back on itself until it is everyone’s fault but his own

for expecting him to make right what he has wronged

the mornings, the evenings, where he chatters sunnily about the bright future he will have once he has sundered the chain connecting him to the people he is talking to – they will be all right, they will be all right, once he has cut through the last chords of affection tying us all together, they will be all right he announces cheerfully once he has cast them off every one.

the astonishment of our love turned back on itself, unwanted so long as it bears no material benefit – he

has no need of love that does not provide amplifiers, and guitars, and wild license, the freedom to do as he will without consequence of broken people

you had a paycheck, he says.

yes.

And now even that is withdrawn. He is done wasting time on the unprofitable marriage that only provided love, and stability, and a home

and children, and a friend that would have been there forever had he only been there a little less part-time.

this

one step,

another

another

another

drag me across the shattered glass

this, too, shall one day pass

I don’t like what I’ve done to the marriage and to you all these years

so could you fix it for me

ASAP

that moment when you realize that

your husband is one of the people who think

that you are very nearly almost not quite looks like but not

a person.

he says

develop a routine

over and over and over and over and you can hear the sound of that phrase like the water that pounds the shorelines to sand

so you scrape together the bits and pieces and scraps and tatters of your attention and time and resources and sanity and

against every odd no sane bookie would ever agree to

you create the island you were commanded to create: And it works

you want to dance on its beaches and make forts in its trees and nap in the cool safe caves

And he washes chaos over your safe harbor, every inch

destroyed by his insistent assertion that this routine

does not apply to him

my friends all seem to think

i’m doing something right, something that’s a coherent direction

done by design, and i

am just flailing and sometimes getting lucky

when you find your source of oxygen

develop fangs, claws, and primal fury