crisis of character

change came as a hard rain
and it pelted down moments and memories
all i could take of me when i went gone
was the breath that I carried within me

every last photograph, the letters I wrote you
the shoes that I wore on our wedding day
the notes from lunch boxes, the deed to my car
there was so much of me you were giving away

it wasn’t me there anymore
and it hadn’t been for many a year
perhaps it had never been me there at all -
there was just the girl who said what you wanted to hear

and you loved it, you loved her
her sheen of perfection
which was really just the effort
of holding herself in

like a warden throwing a piece of soapstone
through the poster of lovely raquel
and, a second later, his finger, his arm
had uncovered the path that was taken from hell

and the instant you recognized you never knew me
all that we’d been just ceased to exist
and the hole that was left in the middle of us
was perfectly sized to hold one of your fists

and you shaved off my hair
and you sent it to clinics
and you looked for the reason
I no longer belonged
and you set out my furniture
and set fire to my effigy
and you sent bodyguards
to point out my wrongs

and you took all my friends
and you took all my dignity
and you took all my money
and you took all my pride
and you took all my spirit
and you took all the sympathy
you took all of it, honey,
then left me to die

you took all except the breath
that I carried within me
the one that I took with me
when I went gone.

*the above came out as a stream of consciousness, single take poem. I did not wordsmith or tweak. It’s just raw, and it feels like a song in the making.

Tags: divorce, identity crisis, loss, poetry, separation