Sixteen Years

I keep showing up
like I have not been emotionally
dragged behind a moving car

Lip gloss
Earrings
A dress that says
I am fine
in three languages

A little perfume
on the neck
as if I am not allergic
to everything now

weather
men
dust
memory
the small humiliations
of wanting too much
from people
who speak in crumbs

This is the part
no one respects enough how much glamour
is actually discipline

How many times
a woman fixes her hair
while her insides
are somewhere in the corner
throwing furniture

How many times
she paints herself
back into a body
because the world
still expects her
to arrive recognizable

How many times
she walks into a room
beautiful
because collapsing
would be inconvenient

There is a reason
women are tired

Not delicate tired

Not take-a-nap tired

Generational tired

Bone tired

Tired from being
the continuity

The meal remembered
The appointment made
The child answered
The bill paid
The birthday saved
The grief folded
and put somewhere
no one would trip over it

Tired from carrying
the invisible inventory
of everyone’s life

Who needs milk
Who needs medicine
Who has a fever
Who has practice
Who needs a form signed
Who has a meeting
Who is breaking
Who must not be told
they are breaking
because then they will break more

Tired from holding
the emotional roof
over everyone’s head
while someone asks
why we seem anxious

Anxious?

Of course we are anxious

We are keeping
the whole sky
from falling
and still expected
to choose earrings

This is for the women
who stayed too long
because they were trying
to be fair

For the women
who left
because staying
was teaching their children
the wrong definition of love

For the women
who are still there
counting the cost
in the dark

For the women
who never married
but still know
what it is
to mother everyone
and be mothered by no one

For the women
raising sons
raising daughters
raising themselves
between laundry cycles
and legal papers
and school mornings
and grocery lists
and the quiet storm
of being the only adult
who notices everything

For the years
we try to make a home
out of a room
where no one is helping us
hold up the walls

For the child
that belongs to two people
but somehow
becomes one woman’s calendar
one woman’s body
one woman’s remembering
one woman’s exhaustion

And yes
we try

We try until trying
starts to look like madness

We try until our tenderness
becomes a second job

We try until we are managing
the child
the house
the money
the meals
the moods
the silence
the resentment
and the grown man
who keeps needing instructions
on how to be grown

We try until love
turns into logistics

Until the marriage
becomes another room
we have to clean

Until the person
who was supposed to help us
carry the life
becomes one more thing
we have to carry

And then one day
the math becomes
so clean
it almost feels cruel:

If I am already doing everything alone
why am I doing it
with someone beside me
making it harder?

That is not bitterness

That is a woman
finally telling the truth
without decorating it first

The best thing I ever did
was leave

I know how that sounds

A woman is supposed
to whisper divorce
like an illness
like a failure
like a stain
she could not get out
of the good sheets

But no

The best thing I ever did
was get divorced

I gave myself
the largest blessing

I signed my name
and called it mercy

I walked out
of the life
that kept asking me
to disappear politely
and I became
someone I could finally
come home to

Sometimes divorce
is not the end
of a family

Sometimes it is the removal
of the thing
that kept the family
from breathing

Sometimes a woman leaves
not because she wants
to be alone

but because
she already is

And then sixteen years pass

Sixteen years
since the paper
the silence
the door
the strange new air

Sixteen years
of learning how to sleep
without listening
for disappointment
in another room

Sixteen years
of carrying children
bills
birthdays
school forms
fevers
holidays
grief
and my own name
back into my own mouth

The sixteenth year opens
like a window
I did not know
I had survived long enough
to unlock

Some days it feels longer

Some days it feels
like I just left yesterday
with my heart in my hands
and no instructions

But look

I made a life

Not a perfect one

Mine

And no
it was not graceful
in the beginning

At first
he hated my guts

Let us tell the truth
without making it prettier
than it was

There was bitterness
There was anger
There were years
when the air between us
had teeth

That is what happens
when a life breaks open

People bleed
People blame
People become strangers
holding the same children
by opposite hands

But time
if it is kind
or if we are lucky
or if everyone finally gets tired
of carrying the old knife
does something strange

It does not erase

It rearranges

The man who once
could barely look at me
now stands beside me
in photographs
at graduations
birthdays
holidays
the ceremonies
our sons keep making
out of their lives

We are not friends
in the small-talk way

We do not sit around
chattering
over coffee
about the weather
or what any of it meant

But we are connected

We will always be connected

There are children
walking around this world
with both of us
written into their bones

That is a cord
no court can cut

And sometimes
there is light
at the end of the tunnel

Not for everyone
Let us not lie
for the sake of a pretty ending

But sometimes

Sometimes the bitterness
gets old

Sometimes the anger
loses its posture

Sometimes maturity arrives
late
limping
but still arrives

Sometimes two people
who could not stay married
learn how to stand
in the same room
for the people
they made together

And sometimes
I look at him now

happy in another life
married again
for almost as long
as I have been free

and I think

God—

I did the right thing

Not with hatred

Not with longing

Just a clean knowing
inside my chest

Because some people
cannot be alone

They run from one marriage
into another
as if marriage itself
was the missing piece

as if the institution
was the love

as if a new ring
could explain
why the old house
was burning

But I did not run

I stayed with myself

I did not remarry
just to prove
I was still wanted

I learned the shape
of my own silence

I raised my children
I built my days
I became the woman
waiting for me
on the other side
of that door

And now
when he looks at me
when his eyes pause
a little too long
on the woman I became

I do not need to know
what he is thinking

That is his country

Not mine

Mine is this:

I left

I lived

I was right

I have walked into rooms
star-studded
and half-dead

I have said
I’m okay
with such good lighting
even God almost believed me

There should be awards
for this

Not trophies
Nothing ugly

Something small
Gold
Sharp

Something a woman could wear
near her collarbone
and not explain

For the mornings
we get up anyway

For the years
we hold everything together
with one hand
and still use the other
to put on mascara

Do not ask me
how I survived it

I don’t know

Some days I am all woman
Some days I am a loose sequin
hanging on for dear life
to a dress
that has seen too much

Some days I am the dress

Stretched
Pulled
Zipped up over grief

Still flattering
from certain angles

Still dangerous
in the right light

I have been loved badly
and still picked the right shoes

I have cried
and then checked my reflection
because suffering is one thing
but looking insane in public
is another

I have carried ache
like a clutch purse
into restaurants
doctor’s offices
parking lots
and conversations
where everyone pretended
not to notice
how much of me
I was holding together
with one hand

And still—

I shine

Not because I am happy
Not because I am healed
Not because the night
has been kind to me

I shine
because something in me
is vulgar enough
to insist

Because even broken things
catch light
when they refuse
to stay buried

Because I have never known
how to disappear quietly

Because every time life says
Be smaller
I hear
Wear earrings

Because every time grief
tries to make a home
inside my mouth
I put on lipstick
and speak around it

Because I am tired
yes—

but I am not finished

There is a difference

A woman can be exhausted
and still be holy

She can be heartbroken
and still be hilarious

She can be divorced
undone
unanswered
overstimulated
and still somehow
look like the main event
in a room
that did not deserve her

That is not vanity

That is resurrection
with better lighting

That is survival
with a little shimmer
because why should pain
get to be the only thing
that leaves a mark?

Look at us

Still here

Still dressed

Still ridiculous

Still making beauty
out of whatever
tried to flatten us

Still walking in
like the floor
owes us applause

Still star-studded
with every place
we almost didn’t survive