To My Ex-Husband: I Was Fluent in What Failed Us

I missed the window of my telling you who you are. My greatest talent, f*cked too thin to mend, or maim when it mattered most. I’m not mad anymore, just sifting through the wreckage of my gift— this heft of language, all I ever said, only salve on hand to save us, too often out of stock. Words flawless on paper, I fell limp spilling from a broken mouth. Throwing spells at your functional illiteracy, believing an explanation could level our podium standings, but it never did. I never do. Even though I’m perfect on paper. You never do what I want, either. Imagining Sisyphus content was the death of us. And we have died nine million times attempting the trick of it— a compromise so smug, filled with hubris enough to spare every kind, every one of us, where no one dies, unless that’s how they wanted their story to end. Our story is ending. What else is there? A rock and a hill, a present mishandled until it becomes a burden. Until we've learned the weight of words won’t hold us, slip, slipping away again and again, and I’m there hauling myself through the unwritten spaces you didn't even notice, you left.