Salvaged Life
I search for grace in every breath I take. I search for hope in his sentences. I search for truth in every gesture of our dance. I wait for answers to the questions I am still afraid to ask. I wait for answers. Wait for what. I wait for nothing. I wait for me. I try to catch myself, try to catch a break, and try to break free of what I broken, what we’ve broken. But the cornflower’s in the soup and I have to fly from here. I tell myself it’s okay. The cornflower wasn’t right for a long long time. I realize I don’t even know how to have a cornflower anyway. Don’t have the first pecan shell how to make a cornflower, build a cornflower, nourish or protect one. And this was not my first attempt. But it was my favorite. I mean let’s face it, I was ill-equipped. Hopelessly unprepared, unversed, uneducated in the ways of wivery. Marriage. I’m excellent at all the before stuff. Believe me. Girlfriend, hookup, live-in, lover. Come on. Do I have to say it? I was the bomb. Spectacular. O-quay?? But I missed the handout or the home-ec slideshow on sustainability of
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See the thing is, we had this child. We built this family. I thought we were bound. All of us. His sister was my sister. My nieces were his nieces. And if you think I didn’t know how to do the marriage thing, I definitely don’t know how to do the divorce. This divorce.
On the sidewalk down below my window, I can hear the Hassids walking to temple. I smell almond extract in what remains of my protein drink and grief instantly drips from me. I rub my thumb over and over the dice I was just using in a writing exercise and laugh. “What’s so funny?” he asks. “You,” I say. "This." And then I’m snaking and gummy bears and all I wanna do is rip off midget memories and run naked through Shabbat. That’s all I want. Or to scream musket balls and rub chinese sandals and magnolia blossoms in his face until he begs me to gravel road and raise cane. But I know there’s a bigger picture, cuz, obviously I’ve seen Oprah. I’ve read Socrates and Gibran. And the poets and other prophets like Springsteen and L. Ron Hubbard and Tennessee Williams and Hemingway. And in my core, I know there’s a lesson. Please God let there be a lesson. A something good or positive. Tell me I haven’t torn my kid’s spirit for nothing. Tell me there’s a salvaged life not yet imagined up ahead, cuz if there’s nothing and I’m just flipping wrecked and broken and looking for the glue, when all that’s coming is a stroke or heart attack and he’s just gonna end up with the 28 yr old cliché and I’m gonna be drooling in my wheelchair some hannukah soon while he bounces his newborn and his new 'she' spends my retirement, well I’m just gonna have to blow some shit up! Which-for sure—will be perfectly understandable. Right?