Stunned and Beaming

Stunned and Beaming

Remember that night the sky cracked open
and the light tried to push through that jagged seam?
It sealed in a flash.

you stopped wearing your wedding ring, you said you forgot.

I awoke in the dryer tumbling like a tennis shoe,
wondering when the spinning would stop.

One morning, for no apparent reason, I woke up from my dream.
I put my hand on the doorsill and the world arrived in Technicolor,
every leaf turned it’s face toward my light, so happy that I’d come home.

Later that day on the phone. You were yelling yet again,
you were shouting at someone who used to be me.
I wondered who you were talking to,
and if I had the wrong number.

I stood in silence, stunned and beaming.

Natalie Breaux
8/18/2009

...and here is the other side of processing the divorce. You are no longer defined by the day to day contact with your former partner, parts of you arrive out of blue that you did not know were there. You start evolving into this new creature whom your former partner hasn't met. He calls one day wanting to reconnect in that old emotionally charged way and instead of being Ginger Rodgers to his Fred Astair, you are sitting in the theater watching the movie from your crushed velvet seat munching on hot buttered popcorn.