The Justice of Revision

 

This is how it read when my attorney sent it to me:


The Petition for Dissolution of Marriage was filed by Petitioner in the matter on August 23, 2007. Respondent filed his response on September 7, 2007.

This is my suggested revision:

2. The Petition for Dissolution of Marriage was filed by Petitioner in the matter, with all due sadness and regret, on August 23, 2007, twenty-five days after Respondent expressed to Petitioner his desire to end their marriage and marry someone else. Respondent filed his response on September 7, 2007.

Over Him

From the moment I started this blog, I've said I was over him. I told every friend in every conversation. I told the curly-haired playwright I dated the first summer. I told my mother and my son and my daughters. But "over" is a relative concept.

I'm over him now. Really.

The only thing worse than being married to him, I realize, is this long drawn out process of divorcing him. The emails back and forth with the attorney (oh-so-nice-and-kind, but still...) The not-overness of the logistics of DIVIDING. CELLS DIVIDE--I MEAN REALLY, WHAT IS THE PROBLEM?

But I am over him. The him-ness of him.

I will nevereveragain wait for the sound of his garage door opening. Never cringe at the footsteps on the back stairs as he slinks up to his study and chooses computer solitaire without hello, without how was your day?

Red Rover, Red Rover, send me back over. Over.

Poison

Maybe I should have poisoned The Pen

So that when he touched it he dissolved into a puddle of goo or ran screaming down his fancy office hallway. Maybe the pen would have wracked him with a painful death like the poisoned golden robes in Medea or the comb meant for Snow White.

UPS tracking says he got the pen. Someone whose name he probably doesn't even know signed for it in the law firm mail room. But there's been no acknowledgement.

I'm not going to ask him.

There's an old saying he used to like to quote to show off his farm boy salt of the earth wholesome roots. I'm going to use it here.

Teaching Mr. Ex manners is like teaching a pig to sing. It's a waste of time and it annoys the pig.

The Hurt He Gave

I have softened the hurt with milky tea and roses. With beer in green glass bottles. With airplane gin. With red wine, the oak lingering on a lover’s tongue segueing to the morning’s kisses and espresso. I’ve softened the hurt at my mother’s kitchen table, in the company of Iowa songbirds and in my daughters’ cars on I-80, and the Lincoln Highway. I’ve softened the hurt lying on the floor with dogs, around the Monopoly board, with a handful of Canasta, and breathing in the dark with a grandchild in the crook of my arm. The hurt, the hurt. The hurt of a bed too wide wrestled and lost to dirt trails and ragged steps cut out of mountainsides leading to blinding white chapels high above the Aegean. The hurt lost to ancient stones and bridges spanning dark waters, to blizzard and dessert, to lake and plain. I am a traveler now, and the hurt tried to find me but I'm the one who is finding, finding, finding.