A Poem for My Ex

On New Year's Eve day, my ex and I had a ritual of divorce. It was sad and powerful and beautiful. We each had two witnesses with us. We shared Scriptures and prayer, we offered our regrets and asked and received forgiveness, we shared our gratitudes, we shared our intentions to move forward in friendship and mutual care and to always put our son first. We held a rope between us and spoke words of release to each other and then had a friend cut the rope, freeing us to move forward into the future with love and joy. We held each other and bawled like babies.

In honor of the man with whom I shared 15 years of my life, with whom I grew up and learned how to love and learned some of my limits of loving, to the man who is a wonderful father to our beautiful boy, I offer this poem, with sincere hope that he finds love again.

"I Love the Way Men Crack" by Ellen Bass, from Mules of Love, Vol. 1.

I love the way men crack
open when their wives leave them,
their sheaths curling back like the split
shells of roasted chestnuts, exposing
the sweet creamy meat. They call you
and unburden their hearts the way a woman
takes off her jewels, the heavy
pendant earrings, the stiff lace gown and corset,
and slips into a loose kimono.
It's like you've both had a couple shots
of really good scotch and snow is falling
in the cone of light under the street lamp—
large slow flakes that float down in the amber glow.

They tell you all the pain pressed into their flat chests,
their disappointed penises, their empty hands.
As they sift through the betrayals and regrets,
their shocked realization of how hard they tried,
they way they shouldered the yoke
with such stupid good faith—
they grow younger and younger. They cry
with the unselfconciousness of children.
When they hug you, they cling.
Like someone who's needed glasses for a long time—
and finally got them-they look around
just for the pleasure of it: the detail,
the sharp edges of what the world has to offer.

And when they fall in love again, it only gets better.
Their hearts are stuffed full as éclairs
and the custard oozes out at a touch.
They love her, they love you, they love everyone.
They drag out all the musty sorrows and joys
from the basement where they've been shoved
with mitts and coin collections. They tell you
things they've never told anyone.
Fresh from loving her, they come glowing
like souls slipping into the bodies
of babies about to be born.

Then a year goes by. Or two.
Like broken bones, they knit back together.
They grow like grass and bushes and trees
after a forest fire, covering the seared earth.
They landscape the whole thing, plant like mad
and spend every weekend watering and weeding.