Divorce

by Susan Cameron

I said, "Hell will freeze over before our love will die."
The young say stupid things like that. We don't know it's a lie.
Now I’m one successful lawyer; you’re a high-priced lawyer too,
So when our marriage fell apart we knew just what to do.

Our troops assemble in the courts when we call reveille –
The Hessians on the left are yours, the others stand for me.
Our bloody little skirmishes, our combat hand-to-hand,
Has escalated to this point. We take our final stand.

We snarl and scream our orders, and before this war is done,
Our napalm burns our daughter and our shrapnel maims our son.
But we’re blinded by the smoke and we’re deafened by the noise,
And the casualties of war are often little girls and boys.

With murder pounding in my heart I roar a battle cry
And watch the life we’d had blow up as fireworks light the sky.
You call in an air strike, and then I take my turn,
With hands on hips, triumphantly, we watch our bridges burn.

Direct hit on the ammo dump! A satisfying roar –
What we had built went up in smoke. No chance of getting more.
I call in the coordinates – before my rockets land,
Belatedly, I realize Ground Zero’s where I stand.

A sickly light illuminates the ghostly, smoky pall.
The windswept ash floats through the air – I watch hell's snowflakes fall.

copyright 2010 - Susan Cameron

Reprise

I'm very pleased that two of my essays are featured in a wonderful new anthology, From the Heart: A Collection of Stories and Poems from the Front Lines of Parenting, published by Write for Charity. All profits from the sale of this book will benefit children's charities, including St. Jude's Children's Research Center. To find out more about the book and how you can purchase it, please click on the Write for Charity link under our favorites below. As a sneak preview of the book, here's a reprise of Snacks, which first appeared here on Tasty Sauce in 2009. Bon appetit!

Snacks

Both pantry doors are opened wide and my son, Eric, studies the contents. He sighs. He closes the pantry, opens the refrigerator and stares inside for a while before sighing again and closing the fridge. He reopens the pantry, as if something new has miraculously appeared in the three minutes since he last looked. The question will come next.

“What do we have to eat?” Eric asks me.

“Chips?” I say.

He shakes his head

“Cheese? Crackers?”

“Nah,” he says. With a shrug he goes upstairs to his room without a snack.

Fifteen minutes later his brother, Greg, does the same thing: the pantry, the fridge, the pantry, the question. I offer suggestions that get rejected.

“There’s nothing good to eat,” he says. “I’m going over to Mark’s house.”

I never have the right snack in the house. If they want chips and salsa, I have cheese and crackers. If they want cookies, I have chips and salsa, since I stocked up from when they wanted those before. I buy potato chips and they want peanuts. I buy peanuts. They want Cheetos. I buy Cheetos. They want Wheat Thins. I buy Wheat Thins and they crave apples, but I’ve thrown out the apples that rotted in the fruit bin from the last time they asked for them.

You’d think by now the pantry and fridge would be so full of stuff they used to want, that sooner or later I’d hit the jackpot and everything they could possibly want would be ready and waiting. But no, I always come up short in the snack department.

I find myself wondering what Mark’s mom has in her pantry, and I decide to call her.

“So Kathy, “ I say, coming right out with it, “What kind of snacks do you have for the kids after school?”

“Nothing they ever want,” she says with a tone of exasperation I’m familiar with.

“Well, what are they eating right now?” I ask, desperate to know what perfect snack my son has found there.

“Oh,” she says. “The two of them stared into the pantry for ten minutes. Then they did the same thing with the fridge. Pretty soon Mark said they were going over to Jimmy’s house and off they went. I don’t think they ever ate anything.”

Still obsessed, I call Jimmy’s house and ask Mary what the kids are eating.

“Nothing,” Mary says. “I think all three of them are on their way to your house.”

I swell with pride. For once I must have the best snacks! I can’t wait to see what they’ll eat.

Meanwhile, Eric is back at the pantry, and I’m feeling more confident now. Bring on “the question”. But before he can ask it, Greg and his buddies swoop into the kitchen, grab Eric, and in a flash the four kids are outside playing street hockey. What about snacks? Don’t they want my snacks?

Deflated, I start to think about fixing dinner. I open the fridge and stare inside. I check the freezer. I open both pantry doors, searching for options.

The kids are right. There’s nothing good to eat in this house.

Copyright Liz Zuercher 2009

Storm Watch

You were born that spring

When the city oozed water

From every crack and pore

Like a soggy sponge.

Unending rain drenched the city

Dissolving its hard lines and solid shapes.

It seemed to soften and spread,

Melting into the landscape,

As if searching for a form

To fit the flooding waters.

So my body stretched and spread,

Shaping itself to your fluid form.

My swollen ankles, like sneakers soaked

With memories of splashed puddles,

Squished as I crossed the carpet

To the window to watch the street below.

Bright umbrellas bobbed like gumdrops

Caught in a rushing current.

At night, streetlamps lit the wet streets

With white shadows that flickered

Like billowing sails on a concrete ocean.

I cradled my swollen belly

Where you rocked in an inland sea,

Watching from the window,

Waiting for the storm to break,

Waiting for a signal,

Waiting for you to sail

From your watery world to mine.

Susan Matthewson

Copyright 1996

And the Work Begins Again

Old habits sneak back in
Excuses at the ready
Forgetting forgetting
What was it that I wanted?
I turn my back for just a minute
And they find their way
Through the cracks of least resistance.

There are still so many cracks

Two years of pulling weeds
And love and miracle grow and the weeds
Take it all out
But that is harsh. It isn’t really all gone – just a little gone.
Is the remembering just part of what
It takes to get it back?
Is the self-flagellation more destructive
Than the weed itself?
The weed can be pulled.

A garden never tends to itself but will become wild

Once again when untended.

And so the work continues.