People Say

 

People Say

                    People say, "You're doing amazingly."

                    I hear what they say

                    I know what they see

                    I behave in certain ways and set a persona of me

                    It takes effort

                        To hide misery

                        To hide misbelief

                        To hide wandering

                        To hide being lonely

                        To hide the ramble of actual terrifying emotions scrambling around inside of me

                    It takes effort

                        To blind people from your misery

                        To blind people from your loss of belief

                        To blind people of your wandering

                        To blind people of your being lonely

                        To blind people of the look that might escape your eyes

                            of the terrifying rambles that scramble inside your mind

                    People say, "It takes time. You're going to be fine."

                    I hear what they say

                        I hear what they say through each day of misery

                        I hear what they say through a million thoughts of misbelief

                        I hear what they say when I pause from wandering

                        I hear what they say when they are with me and I am less lonely

                        I hear what they say, only when the rambling and scrambling inside my head

                            take a moment not to terrify me

                    People say, "You're going to be happy again one day."

                        I hear what they say

                        I'm waiting for that day when misery finds somewhere else to play

                        I'm waiting for the day when misbelief becomes beliefs stronger than the grief

                        I'm waiting for the day when my wandering leads to peace and away

                            from cries in the night

                        I'm waiting for the day when someone else fills the loneliness he left

                            at my side

                        I'm waiting for the day when I am no longer terrified ...

                    

Betrayal

 

     Betrayal

                    I can not believe this is my life

                    I honestly can not believe this is my life

                    It was scraped away

                    The life I had

                    Scraped

                    Trashed

                    Destroyed

                    Ruined

                    My life

                    Me

                    Me

                    I do not know

                        how

                          a thing like this

                             happened to me

                    I do not know

                    How to save her

                    The woman

                    Less powerful

                        Than this

                            Betrayal

                                Done to her

Words in a Line

 

Words in a Line

                    Friends stop me

                    Concern and curiosity on their face

                    They want to know how I am

                    They want to know how it is

                    They want the story

                    I pull back

                    Always

                    Every single time

                    "I can not talk about it," I say.

                    I never talk about it

                    I do not want to cry

                    I will cry

                    I refuse to let this fucking story of my life

                    Constantly make me cry

                    They are always there

                        The tears

                    Right behind my eyes

                        Waiting

                    I want to tell my story

                    It is far different than the one he tells

                    I want others to know

                    My narrative

                    It burns inside of me

                    The urge to defend myself

                        The desire to scream the truth

                    But

                    It is too long of a story to tell

                    To concerned and curious faces

                    It is too long of a story to live again and again

                    In random places

                    It is a long story with many years of details

                    So many of which

                        Bring tears to my eyes

                    So many of which

                        Are no one's business

                    So many of which

                    Will not reverse or diminish or redefine

                    The story that is now my life

                    Into anything other

                        Than

                            So many words in a line that cause me to cry ...

Phantom Pain

 

Phantom Pain

                    What do they call it? 

                       Phantom pain?

                    When you've lost an arm or a leg?

                    I have that now

                    On my left hand

                    Not pain, really

                       Not of the hand

                          Not of the finger

                    But the ring is gone

                    Not lost or stolen or given away

                       Not severed

                       But, yes, severed

                           Removed

                    It took me a lot of days

                    To sever it, to make it no longer a part of me

                    It is a memory my brain will not allow to fade

                    The habit

                    The searching for it every single day

                    The awareness that it is gone

                        Removed and missing

                           Gone, but not away

                    I don't know why exactly

                    But I took a safety pin

                    And hung my two rings to a lamp shade that goes to a lamp on my vanity

                    I see them every day

                    Hanging there when I do my hair or makeup

                    I think I put them in this strange and stupid place

                    To remind me that they do not define me

                    I did not place them someplace reverently

                    Or safely

                    I placed them randomly, attached with a safety pin to a cloth lamp shade

                        There they will stay

                        Until one day when I store them away

                            The day my brain allows the memory of what they meant

                               Of what they meant to me

                                   Of what they once meant to him

                                To fade completely away ...

                    

                    

                                

                    

Wine Day

 

Wine Day

 

            This is the day I drink wine

            For years and years and years it has been this day

            On patios in the city with the same friend

            Wine and talking politics and movies and kids

            Even through recent months

            She sat with me

            The two hours each week

            We shared in comradery

            Little did I know

            I was being deceived

 

            I want to believe I will go forward in my life

            More protective of my dignity

            I want to believe I can build walls and carry a shield

            That will protect me

            I want to believe I will not trust so easily again

            I trusted him and her, and her with him

            That was my greatest mistake

            But it is not in me

            To fear people without cause

            I need to learn how to see

            What it looks like

            When people are betraying me

            I don’t need shields or walls or an invisible disguise

            I just need to open my eyes

 

            I’m trying to rationalize why my hatred for her is more than for him

            What he owes me is my lifetime

                    She

            It was two hours each week of my time

                    She

            Methodically stole what was mine

                    She

            Has so much of my life in her hands

            And he’s allowing her

            To destroy me

            Destroy us

                And

                    She

            Now sleeps with my man

 

            Ask me the thing that hurts the worst

            Ask me

            It’s not the quiet

            Or the loneliness

            While those things are unbearable most of the time

            It’s not that he’s in her bed, while the thought disgusts me, torments me

            It’s not the hundreds of calls he made to her and the many he wouldn’t take from me

            It’s not even the lying they both did to my face for months, even years

            It’s not that he was with me, really with me until the moment I caught him, until the end

            It’s not the blatant abandonment of me and our family, 

                    while that runs a very close second

                It’s …

                        That he has not once said to me that he is sorry

                        Not once

 

 

I am a Willow

 

I am a Willow

 

 

            I don’t live with willows

            I live with oaks

            But willows call to me in my poetry

            I know why it is

            It is because they weep

 

            She said to me, “What do you want? What would you do? 

                    What if? What about? Can you forgive if he comes back to you?”

            I knew the answers

            They came quickly

            Forgiveness is my superpower

            The problem is … he’s never forgiven me

               He left me a long time ago

 

            My own silence is killing me

            It is my first advice to anyone dealing with this similar tragedy

            Silence is a powerful tool

            But it takes enormous strength

           He took so much of mine with him

           It now resides between their sheets

           A withering shadow of me

           I never knew how cruel he could be

           Can I forgive cruelty?

           The oaks in my yard are plenty

            To find the sun, their trunks don’t just climb straight and high like most trees

            Some of their heavy limbs grow from their sides

            Stretch out left and right, far and wide

            They are called Live Oaks

                Because they do whatever they have to

                   To stay alive

 

            I don’t live with willows

            I live with oaks

            But willows call to me in my poetry

            I know why it is

            It is because they weep

            I’m not sure how they stay alive

           With their branches reaching for dirt and not the sun in the sky

            I need the oaks to call to me

            Oaks do not cry

 

            When I count the days he’s been away from me

            I can plainly see

            He is a live oak

            I am a weeping willow tree

            I need to find someone

            That instills in me

            The amount of cruelty it takes

               For me to stay alive

            I need to find the strength

               To crawl out from beneath their sheets

                  And save me

 

 

 

 

 

 

Night

 

Night

 

            I had a dream

               I intentionally walked out on a highway in front of a car

               I woke from the dream, not fearful for my own life, but the others I would have ended

            Despair in my waking hours followed me into sleep

            But then I was beholden to reality

 

            Sometimes at night I see spiders on the walls that aren’t really there

                An imaginary spider is almost more frightening than a real one

            They cause the same frightful reaction

                but you know you can’t kill them

 

            There was a year when I watched my mother cry every single day

            I thought I was watching life drain from her with each and every tear

            But even with the days and nights that drowned her in sorrow

            I never saw one day where she did not get dressed, fix her hair and make-up, be

                 the person she knew herself to be before that year of tears

            The tears eventually faded

            But they did change her face

 

            Every night I put my little dog to sleep in her crate

            I have done so for years

            I need to stop doing that

            She earned nightly freedom a long time ago

 

            I thought it would be the nights, but it is the mornings

               I have all day to rummage through a million thoughts, shed some tears

               All day to attempt to replace hopes and dreams, 

                    throw away the ones that will never be

               All day to explain the pain away in so many words

               All day to take too many steps, to move my body until it hurts

               All day to find people to fill the void

               All day to search for strength and purpose

               All day to find joy to disguise sorrow

               All day to know that the next day is another tomorrow

           The mornings offer only a beginning

               Of doing all those things again

 

            I know my face is changing

               I don’t know who it is I see

       But each day she rises, gets dressed, fixes her hair and make-up, so she can pretend 

          she is the person she knew herself to be before she feared the mornings, 

              before he changed her destiny

 

 

Wild Thing

 

Wild Thing

 

            I wake many mornings lately dragging into daylight vivid dreams

            It’s strange when your reality creeps even into the place meant for escape

            Is it to brace me?

            A way of building strength?

            Or just another cruel way to bend me to my knees?

 

            I wake most days happy I survived another night

            I’m not used to being alone or sleeping alone or living alone

            I need to find peace and the strength to crawl out from all of this with more dignity

               Than I currently possess

 

            He announced to the world yesterday

            A dinner he prepared for the two of them

            No one knows that the dinner was for her and not for me

            No one knows what he’s done to me and our family

            No one knows that he posted it to spite me

            But he’s happy playing the victim

            In this Greek tragedy that is now my life

 

            I thought of a question a therapist asked my daughter

            “How many tragedies have you survived in your life?"

            I asked myself this same question

            This is the first

            And I’m unsure I will survive

            “I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself”

            That’s been in mind for years and inked on my arm

             I should have placed it where I could view it more clearly

             I have to contort arm to even see it and it’s impossible for me to read

             In a mirror the words are even more unclear, as they are backwards

             It does me no good for others to read it to me

             It does me no good to have been the wild thing that offered him flying days

             He threw everything wild about me away

             Some things I will never do again

                 Some of that is a relief

                 Most, is only sad to me

            And wild or not, it makes me weep

            Sorry for myself

 

            I used to wish for cloudy days

            The sun always calls me to be busy, stay in motion

            I am like the animals that venture out of a den, out of darkness

            To scavenge or roam or play

            The shadowy days make me still, let me lay

            Now, I only wish for sunny days

            When I lay, I want to sleep and escape

            I am not defeated enough yet

           To sleep my life away

           But I’m finding it very hard to roam and play

  

           They say artistry often swells in doom and gloom

           I’ve seen where that is so true

           Maybe we hide much of our worth in blackness

           Like a spot of light that shines bright in a dark room

           Our brilliance only comes out to play

           When it has to peel darkness away

 

 

Motion

 

Motion

 

                The things I’m doing these days are mechanical

                Most all are painful

                I’ve had a life very intentional

                Until now

                Now, I am in lost control

                I go through hundreds of motions alone

                Motions to prepare and survive each coming day

                Days I’m not wanting to live

                Not that I do not want to live

                I just do not want to live life this way

 

                I reminded my mother yesterday

                Of the year she cried most every single day

                She said, “I think it was more like two years.”

                I don’t remember it that way

                But it is probably true

                It was her life she recalls

                I was simply a fall out person

                In her story that is now so much like my own

 

                I’ve had security cameras installed all around my house

                I’m afraid to live alone

                But now, with every alert of motion

                I do not fear so much for intruders

                I fear that it is not him

                Once again

 

                I am being encouraged to move forward

                I am resistant

                I can not live with or forgive what he has done

                But I have always been his

                I don’t know yet how to be the person

                That sheds the life she had and the life she’d planned

                The person living life mechanically

                With no more ring on her left hand

                I don’t know yet how to be the person

                That the love of her life left behind

                I might be like my mother

                A person that cries for two years

                A person who was so blind

                A person in mechanical motion, and afraid of every motion

                That is no longer him

 

 

 

I'm Not His Last

 

I’m Not His Last

 

 

                She once said to me, “I was his first love.”

                She tried to get him back, but he wouldn’t leave me

                I was able to say at the time that I was his last

                That is not true anymore

                Another was able to take him from me

                I wonder if it will last

                Not that I want him back

                I never want him back

                I saved our love too many times already

                He would claim the same, I think

                But it’s burnt to the ground now

                No more bridges to build or to cross

                No more clothes in his drawers or closets

                More room for me, I guess, now

                He dragged all of his things away in trash bags

                He didn’t even look back

 

                I sleep alone and drift off thinking of him in her bed

                I’ve never known torture before

                I know it now

 

                I make dinners for myself and enjoy some of that freedom

                To eat what I want

                When I want

                Or not eat at all

                Which happens too often these days

                I’m withering away

                I once said to someone in jest, “I wish just once I’d get depressed to lose weight.”

                That was a stupid thing to say

 

                My son said today, “It was bound to happen one day.”

                But that isn’t true of the love I thought we had

                It was an old love, but I never once knew he wanted to leave me

                It was not perfect, obviously

                I thought he could never see his life without me

                I was naïve

                Stupid

                Deceived

                He’s been seeing his life without me behind my back

                I need to stop loving a man that no longer loves me

                I need now to be someone else’s … last