Very Long Poem

Sometimes I write this prosey, humor-y poems that are not like the others. Here's one from the frustration file in the overwritten style of the break-up letter:

May 2007
The Kitchen Table

Dear America,

We have been married for thirty-eight years, and while you have always been something of a fuck-up, America, you used to be a dashing, well-meaning, even groovy fuck-up who tried to do some good in the world. It wasn’t always good, but you and I could at least feel that your motives were right and just, that we had both good and bad in our marriage, as we should expect. And we were so in love for a while, and the sex was delicious at first. I know, I know, I pledged myself to you. I was so happy just be with you that I said that pledge everyday for years. But you made a pledge to me too. These last twenty years, the last six mostly, have become too much for me to bear. I barely recognize you now. I just can’t keep apologizing for you in public all the time. Especially since I remember my pride at being with you, extolling your virtues at all those dinner parties. But that public embarrassment is nothing compared to our private life.

I am leaving you. The sadness I feel at those words nearly stops my hand, but I feel I owe you some explanation.

All of our marriage together, while you helped to support me and make my teaching our children and others’ possible, I have suffered, America, the buffeting of your abuse. I can’t win what has become only battle with you no matter much my love for you leads me to wish to fulfill your desires.

Over the years, more and more often, what you have promised and what you have done diverge. Either you are lying maliciously, or are simply too callous to care about the effects of your behavior. You said you would focus our family’s well being, but neglected us in the most disappointing way. You refused to let our children really learn, or even to feed some of them, and you made many of them sleep outside for no reason at all. When I raised objections, you said I was crazy, that they had to learn to fend for themselves, and huffed out of the house to disappear for hours. Then you went and tore up Kyle and Dwayne’s landscaping, probably to warn we what would happen should I let the kids back in, but that’s another matter. You said that you would consult me in the important decisions, that we would discuss them and choose the best courses together. Instead, you have made decisions unilaterally, saying that discussion was a sign of my doubt, even a lack of love for you. When you allowed discussion, you misrepresented the facts and choices, leading me to agree to courses of action I would never assent to with full knowledge. The cognitive dissonance is just too much bear. No matter how much I remember loving you, I just don’t know who you or we are anymore.

And the physical abuse? Need we rehash that? You know what you did. What you allowed to happen. Remember how you used to want me to call you Uncle when we were in bed together. “Say Uncle, Say Uncle,” you would whisper in the desperate moments. Well, then it changed, it changed to, “Who’s your daddy?” I started to worry that the incest metaphors were getting too creepy, so I asked that we not play that game anymore. You know what you did. And you taped it, and you put it on YouTube, and now men on the street won’t stop leering and rubbing against me. I just can’t deal with this. I know I could go to the police, but getting the fuck out of here is just easier than dealing with your legal system. There are so many husbands with whom I would be safer that staying with you is simply irrational.

And the neighbors? What really terrifies me is that you’re becoming more and more paranoid. Yeh, I know one of their spoiled kids blew up our tool shed, but you know, the Karsoszy’s kids were in there too. Why did you have to go all Rambo like that? We were not the only ones bereft that day. I know that some of them just are not on the same reality map we are, but you and I are not on the same reality map anymore either. I fear that you have felt my withdrawal from you, my support flagging. Your constant fear even of people we use to have cookouts with and worked with on some of the homeowners association projects, I fear you might escalate your more and more random and aggressive behavior toward them. They’re so scared of you that they haven’t even noticed the crack house is open for business again. I know, right on the corner where we worked so hard to get them out, but they’re back because everyone used to look up to you and now they don’t know where to look. I have no idea why you had to blow up down the Jaffif’s Rose of Sharon, but you did. And they had nothing to do with the shed, and you knew it. Now I can’t even look Noor in the eye. She and I used to have coffee. Now we have nothing. That was all you, America. You’re breaking everything. Isolating me more and more from my friends. Where did you get that C-4 anyway? What is in that room in the basement you put the electronic lock on?

Anyway, I’ve asked you for years and years to help me get the radon thing under control and a water filter that catches arsenic, but you just won’t do it. You’ve gone so overboard with your precious goddamn “lawn care” that my vegetable garden and my roses are poisoned at the root. I couldn’t grow us edible vegetables if I were Martha Goddamn Stewart. And all that smoking in the house, do you know what that’s doing to my health? Do you care? No, all you do is bitch about our insurance premiums, how we can’t afford that new Escalade.

There’s just too much to write. I mean thirty-eight years of unstable and now dangerous marriage, America? How could I explain it all?

I have to go catch my plane. Now don’t go looking for me, don’t ask what flight I was on. The most mortal moments in a woman’s life are the days just after her abusive husband discovers she is leaving, so I assure you, America, by the time you read this, I will be long gone. I have had myself declared legally dead so my paper trail will end. I stole the identity of a long dead French sheep farmer who used to make Roquefort. To do this, I have betrayed you for a long time by saving part of my meager teacher’s salary in a tax exempt account in the Cayman Islands that I might pay for identity theft and expatriation to a place where you will never find me. I know the double insult of my betrayal and absence will leave no place for you to aim your anger. Your frustration and possible consequent behavior sadden me for both you and those you will no doubt injure or annoy as you burn it off.

But I can’t help anyone if I am not whole, and I am not whole, America. Not anymore. Please, take care of yourself, and there’s a casserole in the freezer. I know how you hate getting back from a junket and there’s no food ready in the house. I have arranged for transfer of the kid’s custody to people who love them, and made that custody a condition of your inheritance of my assets and possessions in my will. I suggest you get some therapy and put yourself back together, but you will have to do it without me. I don’t care what you do with the house or my grandmother’s silver or any of it. A legal death certificate and the new notarized will are on the desk next to your iPod. So, that’s all up to you, which is how you like it. I just need to rest. I’m going someplace where I’ll have to live by my hands. You know, most of the world. Working with my hands, concentrating on simple survival will help settle my soul and rebuild my sense of connection to life. It’s all I can manage now.

I loved you.

Your legally dead wife,
Kathy