Ode To Divorce

or (Please God, Help Me Keep This In Mind)
© 1993

Being with you
was like living at the bottom
of a deep, deep hole . . . . .
that I didn't even know I was in.
Now that I'm free and I see where I was,
I marvel that I had wanted so badly to stay there with you —
such misery is sin!

Now, when I come in and holler "I'm home!",
I no longer brace for your ho-humm indifference to chill me.
My pets dance around me. My projects surround me.
They thrill me! They need me! They feed me!
I'm feeling so free!

No longer am I in confusion nor pain
when you douse out my laughter,
or frown on discussions or jokes that I tell.
No longer down-trodden that you, my own partner,
devalued my love, and my work, and my life.
GO TO HELL!

No longer entrapped by your limited concepts,
I live my life just as I please —
for me, a gazelle in the wind.
I drive down the highway for miles, then realize
I'm no longer trying to please you, to fix you, to patch things.
There's nothing to mend!

I spend all my time now enjoying existence
and reveling in mine. I'm alive!
Can't figure out what I had clung to.
I sleep now less fitfully. I greet life more cheerfully . . . . .
for now I don't care if you kiss me, or miss me, or not.
HA!

Amazing! I've new friends who like what you hated about me.
Our psyches weren't matched! I'm feeling more loved . . . . .
So thinking it through, though I sobbed when you left,
it's worked out quite nicely for me —
my support reaches down from Above.

It frightens me, though,
how the Song of the Sirens confuses.
Romance sucks us in. One kiss and we're blinded.
But . . . . . the loneliness I had endured as your spouse
was by far, worse than being alone is.
(Please, God, help me keep this in mind!)

Written 3 months after my divorce. Every word of this one is drawn from personal experience.

A Tempered Sword

By Michele T. Fry, ã 1996

 

I thought myself ungainly as a child,

but my Mother, feeding fancies of her own

pasted labels on my unformed soul with oft-repeated phrases such as

     "Come to me, my precious ballerina."

 

So I grew up a cynic,

disbelieving any praise I got from her

as well as every disingenuous

remark that pierced my ear.

 

My strengths went undetected

but I managed, hanging on

to some nameless noun

I knew to be my SELF.

 

I read in classic literature

of heros who had risen like the Phoenix

from the ashes of their own annihilation.

I took heart, and I smiled

(with that Mona Lisa smile —

distant gaze, folded arms, cool resolve) . . . . . . .

and laid siege to the deafening defeat

which was roaring all around me day and night.

 

I was certain I was strong

and I knew I had power.

Something beautiful was stirring deep within me,

though it seemed no one else could see what I saw.

 

"You will metamorphosize in good time",

said my soul to my heart, and I believed it!

As an article of faith this became my religion

as I slogged through the slights and the nays

and the disapproving looks and the backstabbing ways

of my fellows towards their fellows.

Through the endless disappointments of my life,

I saw light through the darkness and myself in the light.

 

As a Samauri does,

I became what I am:

 

     Folded once. Folded thrice.

     Thrusted yet again into the fires of Life,

     then again, layer on layer,

     I was bent and beaten flat

     on the anvil of Strife

     'til the edge I could hold

     was undullable in conflict

     and the arc my blade could trace

     matched a ballerina's grace.

     and the handle fitted to me

     gleamed with polished usefulness.

 

Thus, I sprang from the Master's hand —

A Tempered Sword.

P.S. Mom, if you read this, it isn’t about you.  You never called me your precious ballerina.  It’s a poem about the damage done by all sorts of people  who place false (good or bad) labels on others, especially children, and about surviving such cruelty by being true to ourselves.