The separation and divorce that ended my marriage began about a year ago.
I found it difficult to do much of anything. Music is normally my primary outlet, but I couldn’t write songs. I couldn’t even tolerate the sound of music.
I typed the first few poems into my phone, holed up in our bedroom as my spouse moved out around me.
After he left, the poems kept coming. I have always kept a few mailing envelopes in a tray by the door, and for some reason, I grabbed one of those to jot down a poem.
That is how this project really began to take shape.
These poems didn’t have much form at the outset, but as I went deeper into the divorce, I got stronger, and so did the poetry.
One of the first things I did when our separation began was to go to a bookstore. I wanted to read my way out, but I couldn’t find any books that lived in the middle of things. All I found was self-help, negotiation tips, and the reasons my marriage might be ending.
Later on, when I read my poems, I realized they were there, in the middle of it all.
Originally, I planned to pick a few poems and submit them to publications. But I soon realized they were one organism. A season of my life. So, I decided none would be left behind.
Each week (on Fridays, going forward) I will publish two or three here, in chronological order as they were written.
Below are the first two poems. There's a link below that you can use to forward this Substack, or you can buy the full book of poems here.
Thank you for reading them.
-Shiny
Separated and Apart | October 2
Nobody tells you what the waves will be like — crying in the middle of a workout one moment to I am a badass bitch who can care for myself the next, total relaxation and this is ok in separate rooms to is this person going to try to ruin my life, doing laundry calmly to sobbing in front of the dryer so no one hears, shoveling a piece of pizza at 9 p.m. because I couldn’t even bear to eat a hard boiled egg, and I doom scrolled all day, googling every possible outcome of this, my one and only life. Did someone sabotage us? What did I do wrong? Is he wrong if he asked for x? What should I do if this? What is he thinking? Is he going to make some move I’m not thinking of? Is this paranoia normal? Is googling all of this normal? What should I actually be doing? Should I stop asking people what I should be doing? Does this count as a poem?
Two Halves | October 2
The death of all our tiny rituals, not sharing an alarm, finding pictures of you and remembering that exact moment. I wonder all the time what you are thinking, what you are doing, just like I thought I would. I imagined all of this happening so many times that none of it is surprising, but none of it is less painful. Every day a new wound is ripped open. Today, we divided our refrigerator into two halves, and you asked me to stop doing your laundry. We just keep on separating things. And at the very end, I guess we will decide if to split ourselves in two.