I'm entering my "Goodbye Poem" in the Brandi Carlile #bythewayiforgiveyou contest. The contest is to share a story (on social media) about forgiveness, whether of yourself, or another. While it's better in true spoken word form, text will have to do. So here goes:
"It took me a year to write this poem,
its as if having something tangible between my hands
made me feel like I actually had to finally let you go.
On the day you left I pretended you just went out for some milk
You were taking longer then usual so then I told myself maybe you were walking the dog and you got caught up talking neighbor Jack about the new invasive rose species taking over the corner.
But Minutes turned to hours.
Hours to days.
Days turned into weeks.
Weeks turned me into hating you.
Now the only thing left on this body that belongs to you is the tan line on my ring finger.
You left just months before our wedding day.
I could have bought a tiny house with the lost deposits.
Could have doubled the bathroom size with the cost of our rings.
Could have decorated a grade school with all of our themed decor.
Books. And Maps. Books and Maps.
I left our map flowers in every place I went hoping you would find your way back to me.
I spent months desperately searching for answers. I felt like I was grieving
for someone but didn’t have the body.
I searched for you everywhere.
In hospitals.
On park benches.
On the walls of bathroom stalls.
In handwriting that could have been yours.
In movie theaters.
In donut shops.
In half eaten leftovers.
In initials carved in trees.
In love-seats.
In dark alleys.
In songs.
I left your pictures hanging on the wall.
Your to do list still waiting to be checked off on the kitchen dry erase window.
I practiced giving your eulogy in my head.
It gets shorter and shorter with each day that goes by.
I grieved for me too.
Because Your promises were a burning house.
I should have known you were never the type of woman I would go back in for.
I should have known you would disappear..::when you wrote our wedding day in your planner with a pencil.
I should have known you were a runner when you always preferred to sit in the exit row when we traveled.
It's where you felt most comfortable.
I grieved for me too.
Because I once had a dictionary in my mouth.
Yet for the last year I stayed quiet.
I was afraid this might happen but you promised you would never rip yourself from my life.
Like a Jewish family headed to a
Concentration camp.
Never knowing which one of us would be alive in the end.
Sometimes when you are broken so badly
you don't ever get back to being the same.
While I'll never be who I was,
I shall return differently.
Perhaps in a different form.
Like a pallet becomes a bench to hold someone up,
or old tshirts become a quilt to wrap my next lover in.
I too will become, the same way these things turn from old memories to new.
I saw a picture of you this week.
Six months later and you're engaged again.
Your smile looked like roadkill.
Like there was nothing left
But bones.
Your eyes seemed hollow.
Carved out from a blue jay trying to rescue his lover.
I could hear the pain echoing out of them.
A pain I used to carry.
But now,
I too will become, the same way old newspaper
Becomes new construction paper…..or a telephone directory.
And I will be more colorful this time,
and you will never find your way back to me,
because I will be...unlisted.
Lover, there is no map that leads to forgiveness.
But somehow.... I found it.
