time served

what brought him to this place

she wants to forget---doesn’t matter,

didn’t matter, because she stood

by her man when it happened &

he had been a great man

on the outside, he had been everything

that she needed & she thought that

her search was over---

so close to happiness she began to

taste it in the air, every morning,

so close to a simple peace, she actually

began to believe that it was possible.

 

the final straw, the last “offense,” the

one that landed him inside for a long stretch,

this changed things, to put it mildly---

he had to work on himself, in order to

survive, in his own mind, all for the sake of

her,

all for the sake of what was waiting for him

when he got out---because he had been told

that he would get out---

because, that is what they will tell you.

 

and no matter how many statistics get thrown

around, no matter how many faces that

came in & went out, through that revolving door,

he thought he’d be the special case,

the one that would do everything that he was told,

the one that would begin to walk a straight line

which would eventually lead to his own personal

“promised land.”

 

but every time she got up in the morning &

looked in the mirror, the strain began to show,

the time being served by her,

days, weeks, months, they added up quicker than

she thought they would & the conversations

through the glass, they just weren’t cutting it

anymore.

 

she knew mother’s who were serving time on

the outside with the fathers of their children

locked away &

on the days when she felt the guiltiest about

ending it with him,

she tried hard to think about what that must be like,

having a third variable in the situation,

a living, breathing, reason to

see it all through,

but she had no reassurance that it would ever be

over &

though she wanted to be that loyal woman,

that romantic movie love, who felt that there was some

kind of pride to be held in

sticking out the struggle

with the one that she loved so much,

she also wanted to

live her own life,

despite any questions about what “justice” was,

or about how others would size her up, with the

knowledge that she decided to

walk away.

 

but she felt that this was the only life,

that it was no picnic, that it had no intrinsic

compassion which would shed itself down upon her

in the guise of what others call “luck” or perhaps

even more absurdly, “divine intervention,”

no, she knew that her own candle was burning too,

so she hung up the phone &

left, of her own volition.