Divorce Poems: A Trail of White Stones

by Diane Jean

Overview

Divorce after 25 years can break your heart into pieces, especially if there are children, a house, animals, and land involved. In time, Nature will lead through grief to healing, bird song will comfort, flower will smell sweet again. Poetry will tell the story.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781452566962
Publisher:	Balboa Press
Publication date:	02/08/2013
Pages:	142
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.33(d)

Read an Excerpt

DIVORCE POEMS

A Trail of White Stones

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By Diane Jean

BALBOA PRESS

Copyright © 2013 Diane Jean
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4525-6696-2

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Chapter One

    FINDING OUT

    The night I discovered
    I could not believe my ears
    But my heart heard as I fainted on the lawn
    By my milkweed garden – for the butterflies
    I went down so deep
    There was only a big blackness
    A tiny, tiny flickering flame
    Like a little candle's fire
    Was all that was left of me
    Our old life
    Over in one moment
    I have come close to death before
    But never so close
    Never with so much pain

    I seemed to see
    I thought I felt
    Like a blind person
    The door
    The door jamb
    The steps, 3 down
    Across the brick patio
    He made for my 40th
    birthday
    Wavering, unsteady walking
    Choked and jumpy breaths barely
    Getting past the lump in my throat
    Past trees, arching plum limbs
    Dark green comfrey on my right
    I hear the bees
    I stumble to the chicken coop
    I have to feed the chickens
    I have to feed the children
    With so many tears
    Waiting in my eyes
    Waiting to slide down my stony face
    I toss out some corn
    Feel into the dark nest boxes for eggs
    Six
    I think I can cook eggs for the kids
    I think I can manage that

    At first
    Then after
    After I overheard
    After I fainted
    After a short unblinking while
    I didn't move or see
    I didn't struggle
    I didn't fight
    I was frozen
    In a bubble
    I was frozen in deep ice
    I was like a pearl amid ice crystals
    Embedded in echoes of frozen water
    In a clear bubble of silence
    I was a mechanical mother
    Cooking and washing dishes and clothes
    I could do it with my eyes closed
    They were open but I didn't see
    I could only breathe if I took tiny breaths
    That cracked my ribs each time
    My heart was broken up
    A mosaic
    Pieces that did not fit together
    If I moved too fast or thought too far
    I'm sure I would have crumbled into dust
    I've lived as a frozen, deaf ghost
    Months, years
    Without brain waves or hope

    He stopped eating my food
    Before he stopped coming home
    What a revealing comment
    I couldn't hear it then
    But he was saying
    Loud and clear
    You do not sustain me anymore
    I find nourishment
    Elsewhere

    It is terrible to be
    Betrayed
    Even more terrible to be
    Betrayed in love
    Open, vulnerable and soft
    Expecting only good
    Defenseless
    Armor off, sword at the door
    The slow moment of discovery
    Stings hot
    A jagged knife thrust
    Deep
    It hurts unbearably
    God, I beg of you
    Let this wound close over
    If I must continue
    In this world

    It's summer
    Fog and dew this morning
    Pink roses in the white vase
    Birds wake me
    Black tree trunks
    Stretch up
    So many
    Thoughts
    After the one I woke holding
    Like a hat full of apples
    He'll come back

    Being betrayed by him and her
    Without a single defense in place
    Was like stepping on a land mine from
    Another dimension
    Turned him into an unknown
    A terrifying alien
    Who knew all my weaknesses
    Turned her into a tormentor
    As if my past was a personal affront to her
    Together they tore down my memories
    Stole my present reality
    Dammed up my future
    In one overheard, mocking spiteful phone call
    In one moment I knew all was lost
    The shock threw me to the ground
    The after tremors continued for years

    I want to cry but I can't
    My tongue is dumb
    My feelings are glass
    I can't breathe
    I hold you and what was
    Like smoke
    You leave
    I stay
    My love solidifies
    My heart petrifies
    I am afraid to breathe
    I see all this from outside
    As I become smaller
    And smaller
    It won't stop

    Divorce, of course, starts with marriage
    Before that, falling in love
    Which I did hesitantly
    Then like a smoke-jumper into a forest fire
    I gave it everything
    Every thing I had
    As if my life depended on it
    And for the greater good
    To say the word betrayal
    Does not come close in any way whatsoever
    To what was destroyed
    The years spent together building, creating
    The work, the rites of passage
    The energy of growing a family
    The children, the meals, the homework
    The laughter, the wonder, the holidays
    The baby teeth in a cup in the china cupboard
    Disappearing before my disbelieving eyes
    Like smoke
    Being betrayed more than shattered my heart
    It exploded me
    The shrapnel of myself obliterated who I was
    It has taken years to make myself exist again

    When I see the low, purple flowers
    That creep orchid-like
    Tangled in their fragrant leaves
    And horizontal stems
    I think of that first spring here
    Our first born son
    One year old
    Learned to walk there
    To bend down, to point
    To try to pick those tiny flowers

    Click
    The photo is in the blue album
    He has on boots and blue jeans
    A little flannel shirt, red plaid
    A hat
    I had so much hope
    Believed whole hearted in my husband
    Total and true

    Now I wonder
    When I see those little flowers
    Was I already betrayed and
    I just didn't know
    Just I didn't know


    ANGER AND
    SORROW

    ANGER AND SORROW

    For a whole year
    I cried myself to exhaustion
    Lifting my head
    Only long enough
    To look for you
    To think pathetically
    I thought you loved me

    I continue to see things moving
    I spider scampering across the rug
    A shadow on a branch
    In the front yard
    Across the room
    Someone standing outside
    Something that is not there when I look again
    There is nothing there
    It was nothing that I saw
    I meant nothing to him
    He said to me
    It was like a whip across the face
    And unexpected

    Before I bore and fell in love
    With my beautiful pink babies
    I wanted a career
    My dearest hope
    To be a foreign correspondent
    Deep behind enemy lines
    Sending back the truth
    Tied to a pigeon's leg
    Pried from the rubble, cut from the branch
    You talked me into something else
    You had a dream
    You led me with promises
    Led me with crumbs of a wonderful future
    Fed me delicious lies
    That stretched and bubbled into babies
    I felt like an anxious imposter, but I tried hard
    You sometimes broadcast encouragement
    On the ground for me for me to find
    Poverty did not help anything except
    The yellowjacket sting of isolation
    Left me walking on a tight rope
    Heavy baby in one arm
    Full laundry basket on my head
    A dish, a loaf of bread, an apple, a sponge
    A butter knife in the other
    Pushing Fluffy out of the way with one foot
    Coaxing a toddler clinging to my other leg
    As I looked far ahead
    Like you're supposed to
    To keep your balance
    To achieve your goal
    While you
    Suddenly
    Were nowhere in sight
    You return nights, washed and shaved
    To wind me up

    After supper
    When you went out
    To the garden
    In the dusk
    Walking straight
    Looking into the distance
    As I washed up and the children played
    I thought you were thinking
    Of us
    Our life, our home, our plans
    When you wanted to move out here
    You told me with excitement
    You had it all planned out
    It was for the well-being of our family
    A safe place to raise the kids
    Clean air
    Clean water
    Our own home
    Our own future
    I believed you
    I believed in you
    Even if
    I didn't know what you were searching for
    You kept that from me quite carefully

    When we moved here
    Did you leave broken hearts and children behind
    Like you would later do
    To us

    I fight this
    I fight and fight
    Wrestle
    Fist and kick
    Pulled down under
    Sputtering, gain air
    What I know and what I feel
    In combat
    That feels like mortal combat
    A fight to the death
    Of one
    I know no matter how much you blame me
    The things you did
    Lie, cheat, manipulate
    Your hidden ballooning debts
    Are not my fault and not my responsibility
    But I feel shame
    I feel like a failure, a failure, a failure

    When we came back to the states with our
    Honorable discharges
    In 1982
    There was no work
    We couldn't find an apartment
    In those days no one helped you re-integrate

    Our families of origin tried to push us back
    Into old boxes
    Like popped jack in the boxes
    To be seen and not heard, like before
    In those four Air Force years
    I saved money for my college education
    Of course, he said, we had to use it now
    We could save more later
    I could go to school later
    But later was four kids later
    Far away later
    Even poorer later

    One evening
    The kids splashed about in one of those little pools
    With two rings that you blow up with the bicycle pump
    They climbed out, dried the grass clippings off their feet
    Dressed back into warm T-shirts
    Hung their bathing suits over the clothes line
    By the lilac hedge
    Played games while I made supper
    Maybe there was ice cream, then pleasant sleep
    While red-headed woodpeckers chirped
    questioningly
    And hay fields, green and yearning
    Stretched for the opal sky

    Later I went to gather up socks and sandals
    Towels and toys
    From the little poolside
    And the water was gone
    All the water was gone!
    Just like that money for my education
    Just like his love for me

    We had a fight
    Year four of our marriage
    I remember going deep into the woods
    And sitting on a flat rock
    Confused and hurt
    We were renovating an old house
    Changing it into a home
    He was making all the decisions
    Steamrolling over me in every way
    When we met in the Air Force
    I didn't realize Uncle Sam
    Was twisting his arm to make him treat me
    With something like equality
    Without the protection of that
    Funny uncle
    I had no way to get that equality by myself
    For myself
    It was like he had worked his way
    Through my veins
    And now needed all my oxygen
    He had been so charming those first years
    He had won me with his fine manners
    Or
    Was it like a magician
    With a bunny in one hand
    And the other holding open the door of a box

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from DIVORCE POEMS by Diane Jean Copyright © 2013 by Diane Jean. Excerpted by permission of BALBOA PRESS. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Contents

Finding Out....................1
Anger and Sorrow....................23
Frozen....................57
Thaw....................85
Acceptance....................109