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Thursday, January 9, 2025

The Omen

I am told it is a raven, not a crow

And the feather on the grass

was not from a hawk, but from one of the vultures in the oak trees

I think I believe in omens

But slow to realize those that are meant for me

Especially those of dark birds shedding wing feathers

that lie lonely on summer leaves

A raven perched daily on a high spot in my yard

It now feels like he must have known

The five vultures had come for me

You watch your life unravel

Into so many shattered dreams

Can it really be dark birds that warn you?

Birds with scratchy voices?

Birds that don’t even sing?

For many days the raven came to my yard

People told me to leave him trinkets

He would bring back gifts to me

I had planned to do it

Anxious to see if he’d bring me a bracelet, a bit of foil, a lost memory

But he’s gone now and no trinkets from me did he receive

I don’t think he was here to trade

I think he came … just to show me that one day he could go away

Waiting to Survive

My heart constantly races these days

Mini panic attacks

It should remind me that I’m alive

But I know my heart is cracked

So, I can only imagine it is going to beat so hard one day

That it will beat its last

I heard a story about a woman’s dog that attacked her

Her beloved pet

Now I fear that too

That the dogs I depend on to protect me

To be with me

To adore me

Will soon turn on me

Like he turned on me

Much of what I held and hold as true

Now frightens me

Raccoons come at night to my chicken coop

They never get in

But they keep trying

One of my chickens died the day he left

He threw her in the trash

My son then came, buried her for me

Out in the back

Where so much love resides in the dirt

So many other beloved pets

I go over and over inside my head

The things I will miss

The things I do miss

The things I was missing

I was missing my heart racing

I was missing my heart reminding me we were alive

I was missing so many things that weren’t right

But now, I miss him in my life

And I will miss being his wife

One night the raccoons might get to my chickens

If that happens

I’ll bury them out back

Where there is so much love that resides in the dirt

Never again

Will I allow love

To be thrown in the trash

Panic attacks are not for the weary

Not for the weak

Not for the defeated

Panic is a kin to joy

The shrill in your body is just as extreme

While one feels darker

Panic feels darker

It is your heart and mind telling you

Stay alive

But the shrill of joy does that as well

Only with a bright light

Joy excites

Panic cries

The waiting is the hardest part

The waiting to survive

Metaphors

I saw a squirrel cross the road today

High above me on a utility line

She was running, then would stop, then run again

I thought, “I don’t know how you don’t get electrocuted,

but you are so smart to avoid the road below.”

So many things, lately, are metaphors for my life

A squirrel running as fast as she can on a high wire

Protecting her life as best she can

But at any moment she could be thrown to the ground

With a sudden jolt

I don’t know how that works, really

How does she not die?

I don’t even know how she knows how to survive

I see myself in mirrors

I smile

Mirror, mirror on the wall

Who do you see when you are not looking at me?

I cleaned the pool

There was a bloated, dead lizard in the basket

I didn’t bury it, but I didn’t throw it, either

I placed it on the grass and looked at it a while

I wondered how long it struggled before its eyes closed

I watched my dogs bathe in the shine of the sun today

I watched as my hens came out to play

Those moments were a refuge

From my tortured thoughts

They were happy

My precious pets

It is unbeknownst to them that I struggle

They are unaware of how in moments like these

That they drag me

Mercifully

From the shadows

I want to say all the things on my mind

Shout my truth from the roof tops

People hear what they want to hear

No one really cares where it went wrong, why it went wrong, who did wrong

I care

Spare me the cliques

I am on a high wire

Running as fast as I can

I try to hear, listen, learn

I can’t hear

I can only hear trumpets blaring inside my head

I am jolted

Thrown to the ground

My life takes my breath away

The moon was full last night

It stood so bold and bright in the night’s sky

Flaunting its beauty indiscriminately for all to see

I adored it for a time

Enthralled by its perfection, its majesty

How is it so precisely round? And gold? How is it whole?

Another metaphor for me

A slice of a person too many days

In a dark sky

But …

To one day be whole again

To rise

Beyond and above the high wire lines …

The Night of Tears

I don’t know why it was on this night

That all the tears came

All those I was somehow holding back

For months and weeks and days

For what?

I don’t know

Pretending to be strong

Maybe

Held at bay

So I could balance the chaos in my life with some sense of

Rightness

I don’t know

But they came

In torrential flooding rains

Down my cheeks and clouds in my eyes

The sadness he has inflicted

An overwhelming desire to die

I have not ever believed myself to be

A person to vanish

But

I allowed those thoughts tonight

How?

Where?

What if?

I wish I could say I pushed those thoughts away

With the greatest and boldest strength

It is not true

They rambled around inside my head

Stronger than I am

For too long

I am angry at myself and even more angry at him

For making me this person

That no longer wants to live

How is that possible that I gave him that part of me

That cares more about us and him

Than I care about me?

How is it possible

Another person can take your will to live?

Two More Closets For Me

My little dog keeps wandering out to the road

I put a collar on her to shock her

Create boundaries where she should and should not go

I need a collar wrapped around my own neck

To shock me when people betray me

To create boundaries of where I am supposed to be

Now that he has left me

I drink alone now on Wednesdays

For years, I gave my Wednesdays to her

I am taking them back

I am reclaiming them now for myself

She can’t have everything

I got two extra closets out of the deal

I was thinking the other day that he is stuck having sex with

the same miserable woman

And

I can sleep with anybody I want

Anytime I want

Anywhere I want

With as many people as I want

I got that also out of the deal

But … that does not pacify me

Not yet

But it will

He bought me a new car

Put it in his name

This man with one foot out the door

Who does that?

I drove that old Mercedes

He got from another girlfriend

The car with no working air conditioner

The one that overheated constantly

The one that is super cute, but has never been good to me

But I drove it

Hers

He gave it to me

He’s going to blame me for his unhappiness

I mean, that’s what they do, right?

He called her a thousand times

When I am still his wife

What if he had called me?

Those thousands of times

What if

Would it have changed our married life

It would have

He never called me a thousand times

He rarely called me at all

I cried so many times

“You never say you love me”

“You never touch me”

“You never see me”

“You care more about yourself than you do me”

What if he had called me those thousands of times?

Would it have said, “I love you. I’m thinking of you. I need you.”

Yes

I don’t know when he stopped loving me

I don’t know that I believe that he ever did

Should you have to ask someone that is supposed to love you, do you love me?

I asked that a lot

Many times over the years

He never once asked me

Do you love me?

Not even one time

Not one time

Not even once

How is that possible?

Was he sure of my love?

I think, yes

There is no way she gives him more than I gave him

I gave him his children

There is nothing more special than that

But …

He left them too

And he sleeps in her bed before their eyes

Not my bed

Not the bed of his children’s mother

The bed of some other

A friend that used to be mine

But no more

No more

Not him

Not her

Escape

It’s taken a while

But now, when I close my eyes tight

I cry

The tears have been kept at bay

With anger and fury and disgust and battling my own defeat away

I know I’m so much to blame

How can I not be?

I just don’t know what I did or didn’t do

I don’t know how I missed the signs, the red flags, the apparent misery

I created in a life that had to escape from me

I think the failing is what is drowning me

Most

My inability to accept I was not worthy

I was not important

I was not considered

I was not respected

I was not protected

I was not chosen

After the millions of moments, he invested, and I invested

In a life together

He says, “She’s nice to me.”

A woman I’ve known to be so many things, but not nice

I want those sides of her that are hateful and mean and hurtful and judgmental

To be inflicted on him

I believe they will be

And then he will know what I know her to be

Not me

Not nice

Not what he and I used to be

Their relationship is built on a foundation of lies

But many relationships begin that way and survive

Would I ever allow him to come back to me

If that happened

If he learned how horrible she can be?

I don’t think so

When I close my eyes real tight

I cry

For what I wanted us to be

We’ve not been close in a very long time

I deserve a man that wants to hold me

To touch me

To be close to me

That takes my calls

That calls me

Says, “I love you,” without prompting

He’s not that to me

He hasn’t been that to me for a very long time

But

I have to be so much to blame

How I can I not be

He was in my life one minute

And then

He ran as fast as he could to escape me

I Know Her

I wish the things I know about her

Were foreign to me

It would make things easier

If I did not know her

But I do know her

Year after year

And week after week

She sat across from me

On patios in the city

Over wine

She shared all of her life with me

I know her

He knew her too

Through me

I gave her to him

Willingly

Blindly

I trusted them both

Year after year

And week after week

To never deceive me

But they both did

Her, across patio tables from me

Him, inside our home

Beside me in bed

Sometimes inside of me

Day after day

He never left

Until I caught them in their lies

Until I caught them betraying my trust

Until I caught them destroying my life

I wish what I know of her was foreign to me

But I know her

I know her better now, than who I believed her to be

She is trash and filth

She always was in some ways

I just chose to tolerate the parts of her that offended me

I should have seen

I should have known

That one day

She would turn that hatred

Of so many things

That I was one of the things

She hated most

She used me against me

To take what I gave her willingly and blindly

Him

What else I know

She is not me

Nothing like me

I know her

Maybe not as intimately as he does

But I know

Her hatred of so many things

Is stronger than her ability to love

He will know this eventually

The Raven

It feels like I’m dying

It’s in my chest, the withering feeling

I think it’s my soul

It sinks further daily

It’s a darkness pulling, yanking, dragging

My heart doesn’t dance often anymore

It races; panicked

My mind races; panicked

It feels like I’m dying

Like my soul is drowning

I search constantly for ways to save it

That’s what we do, right?

Survive?

Tread water, force ourselves to the surface, gasp for air?

I’ve watched people do it

Survive heartbreak and trauma and devastation far worse than mine

It can be done

I keep searching

I tell myself this is just another test

Of my strength

I’ve had this test before and survived

I had another very similar test many years ago

Where I lost the life I thought I had and was forced to replace the lies

With a truth

I was broken, but I survived

We all find ways to survive

Lies

Betrayal

I took my dad to lunch the other day

I watch how frail he has become with age

He walks with a cane

But his shirts are starched and his jeans are pressed with a seam down each leg

His eyes search the ground with each step

Fear of falling or tripping

His sight is failing him

His mind remains strong

He moves slowly but keeps moving

He lost his wife two years ago

He’s lonely

But his shirts are starched, and his jeans are pressed

He keeps moving

Into the final days of his life

Surviving

There was a raven that often came to my yard day after day

A black bird

An omen I think

“I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A small bird will fall frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself.”

That is a favorite line from a poem

I have inked on my arm

I love the sentiment

I need to send this message to my soul over and over again

My soul is not really dying

I am simply drowning myself in self-pity

A Million Minutes

I am lonely now so much of the time

With only my thoughts to torture me

I have planned three quarters of my life

A million minutes around what I wanted

What was intended to be

What was him and me

I don’t know how to change my life

From all I’ve ever known and desired for so long

I don’t know how he’s doing that

Three quarters of his life

Has been with me

I don’t know how to bottle this misery

And store it someplace far away

My mind won’t allow my soul and my heart

To release

To relieve

To free

I wake on each day

With a new sense of dread

More tears

More heart break

More fear

More anger

More hatred

She’s brought out the very worst side of him

He’s drawing out the darkest parts of me

I never imagined

Not for one day

Or over a million minutes

That this is where we would ever be

I don’t believe I was blind

While it is obvious I was blind

But he had convinced me

Over a million minutes

And forty years

That he would always be mine

I ponder constantly on what he has done

And it riles me to anger

He gave himself a place to land

She gave him a place to land

Even though I believe he’s trapped

He’ll never turn back

I don’t want him back

Not this cruel person he has become

But I am so lonely now so much of the time

Lonely for what he had convinced me

Was intended

Was a million minutes to come

Of us

Now

All the minutes only offer me

Torture

Thoughts of him with her

and not with me

“A lot can happen between now and never”

I heard that quote yesterday

My “never” constantly waivers

From day to day

I need my “never”

Set in the hardest stone

I need my heart and soul

To never forget

How alone he left me

How he threw all his clothes in the trash

How he threw my chicken in the trash

How he has never once said that he is sorry

How he has never once looked back

How he’s never once checked on me

How he sleeps in her bed in front of his own children

While he is still married to me

How he never called me

How he never touched me or saw me

How he never initiated not even one thing

To make me more happy

How he never made me believe

He had a foot out the door

Not ever

Never

In a million minutes

I need my heart and soul

To forever remind me

That his “nevers”

Are not as strong as

The “never” I will make into a million minutes

Of reminders

Of what he has done

To me and him