After the divorce

At nine pm any day of the week,
I can get in the car and drive to see

the men in dark clothing hiding
in the middle of the street. They

walk like mirages or memories and
I’m not exactly sure if I would pass

through them if I were not able
to swerve away. You know that feeling

of being in a dream but you are moving
alongside the moving. This isn’t a dream.

It is the mystification of being new
in a town so far from where I came

no one even recognizes the old name.
They stumble over the sounds. Tongue

the back of their teeth trying to say it
like a baby rolling the marbles of new

words around on her tongue. Not far
off, I can hear the music of congregation,

of old friends every night - voices rising
above barrel fires. They warm themselves

outside the crumpled aluminum-foil
trailers with a kind of laughter I’ve never

heard. But I cannot see them. These times
it is fair to say there is not much more

than fire to turn on the light in eyes
that have been cauterized by the strange

branding of this back-turned world.

Author's Note

2024

Reviews

[Twilight]

I concur with Julie's review. Well, her list.

But, there is far more expressed poetically; in this piece. And, quite a few metaphors which only the writer could be aware of having used.

There is possibly, a divorce between your married life of the past; and alternate reality of what follows on from that.

So, in a way; it reads as if you're representing the new doubts and realities of that immediate form of "after life" (so to speak).

It includes a few cryptic passages too, and also conveys a kind of dazed dream-like perception of the new reality? Generally, expressed as a dark phase; including one or too moments of sad nostalgic longing.?

[Eilis]

Hi, thanks for reading and sharing your impressions. I was reaching for a few things here, yes, partially my own understanding and partially trying to articulate the strangeness of such a significant after. It was a thirty year relationship so the after-time has many significant new paths and it is overwhelming. That is what I a trying to work through in the poem. Dream-like is definitely a good description. Appreciate your thoughts.

[Arundass TP]

Excellent writing putting all your feelings and imagination. Nicely written poem

[Eilis]

Thanks for reading, Arundass

[jacob erin-cilberto]

I swerved away from life after my first divorce. the others passed like your speaker in the night, others unaware of the heartbreak...and me? Just feeling I need to move on.
To feel unnoticed before, during and after a split....does test the resolve of the spirit.
j.

[Eilis]

It’s a strange space to inhabit. The split happened years before in spirit but the physical leaving is something you can’t really be prepared for. The need to reinvent. Thank you for your understanding comments.

[SkinlessFrank]

The sense of loss on so many levels in this poem is heartbreaking. It reminds me of that zombie-like sleepwalking that I associate with grief. We walk and we see but we don’t comprehend what it is before our eyes, and we wonder whether anything will ever be the same again.

[Eilis]

Hi, thank you for sharing your view. There is definitely a fight between clinging to familiarity and recognizing the only way forward is complete reinvention. It’s a strange place to be in. Thank you again.