Trailing a red robe in the kitchen like he was waiting for coronation.

If I loved someone like that. A figure of questionable authority

figuring out which relics to preserve under cling wrap.

For the way he smelled like cedar. Mispronounced the names of plants.

II.

There’s an airport & then there’s The Airport

From Which He Called Me On Our Second Anniversary

To Say He Couldn’t Love Me & Would Never Marry Me Ever.

At some gate there’s a specifically culpable airplane he was on for 12 hours, no contact.

There’s another woman & then there’s The Woman

I Knew He Would Leave Me For, there in a hotel with him—

there to soothe him, to believe, as I did, in redemptive sadness.

There’s regret & then there’s being so angry at myself

that I drove all night until I found the water & walked into it, March lakewater

gray & stinging. Muscovy ducks in the shallows, their strange low muttering.

III.

What is this impulse in me to worship & crucify

anyone who leaves me—

I have tried to frame up the cavalry in gravel,

in rectangles, in an honor code

of stamping out the fire. I’m paying attention. Look.

There’s an exchange rate

for bad behavior. It begins with the word until.

I agreed to affirm small kindnesses

until disaster. A risk I could keep now & pay for eventually.

A contract that begets blame begets

guilt. I had to say at every stage I give permission to be hurt. Until.

Once he agreed to stay the night with me

& by morning a small ding in the glass had spidered over

his windshield. The cold shattering it completely.

It’s not anyone’s fault that this world is full of omens.

By all accounts, history is a practice

of ignoring things & hoping for the best. You can drive

yourself crazy with looking. You can expect

bad luck to mark you unfooled, fooled.

Light to mark you with light.

IV.

I know in this system I am not blameless.

I used to promise myself

that when we broke up I would tell him

I love you. I thought of it as a punishment.

I dreamed I let him look for me in the woods.

I stayed perfectly quiet. I was covered in rough scales

& my eyelashes dropped burrs when I blinked.

In the dirt below I watched him search for me.

He said Is it enough that I want to be different.

Maple seeds spun out from my hair.

V.

I divorce thee, history

of looking at him in the fog

coming up over Scotland.

I divorce thee, North Sea

longing by boat.

I divorce thee, insomnia.

I divorce me driving to him

five hours over ice

& then picking a fight.

I divorce him introducing himself

as my friend, never wanting to be

on the phone; I divorce thee,

roasting pan & HGTV, I divorce

staying quiet willing him

to speak. Music for saying things