The Poem I Read at My Own Divorce Hearing
The judge didn't expect it. Neither did I.
The divorce hearing was in a courtroom that smelled of paper and coffee, the kind of room where the truth is supposed to be told but rarely is. I was supposed to say the thing the lawyer had prepared, the thing about the settlement and the custody and the future.
I read a poem instead.
I don't know where the urge came from. I had written the poem the night before, in the kitchen of the flat I was about to leave, and I had brought it with me because the poem was the only thing that was true.
The poem was about the way the marriage had ended, not with a fight but with a slow fade, the way a photo fades when you leave it in the sun. It was about the way the house had become two houses, the way the bed had become two beds, the way the life we had built had become a life we were sharing.
The judge did not interrupt. The lawyers did not object. The room was quiet the way a room is quiet when everyone is feeling the same thing.
When I finished the judge said 'thank you' and she meant it. The settlement was signed, the divorce was final, and the poem was the thing that had made the truth possible.
I keep the poem in a frame now, in the hallway of the flat I moved into after. It is the only thing from the marriage that I kept. The poem is the truth that the papers could not hold.
By Team Writory, for Writory.
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