time served

what brought him to this place
she wants to forget---doesn’t matter,
didn’t matter, because she stood
by her man when it happened &
he had been a great man
on the outside, he had been everything
that she needed & she thought that
her search was over---
so close to happiness she began to
taste it in the air, every morning,
so close to a simple peace, she actually
began to believe that it was possible.

the final straw, the last “offense,” the
one that landed him inside for a long stretch,
this changed things, to put it mildly---
he had to work on himself, in order to
survive, in his own mind, all for the sake of
her,
all for the sake of what was waiting for him
when he got out---because he had been told
that he would get out---
because, that is what they will tell you.

and no matter how many statistics get thrown
around, no matter how many faces that
came in & went out, through that revolving door,
he thought he’d be the special case,
the one that would do everything that he was told,
the one that would begin to walk a straight line
which would eventually lead to his own personal
“promised land.”

but every time she got up in the morning &
looked in the mirror, the strain began to show,
the time being served by her,
days, weeks, months, they added up quicker than
she thought they would & the conversations
through the glass, they just weren’t cutting it
anymore.

she knew mother’s who were serving time on
the outside with the fathers of their children
locked away &
on the days when she felt the guiltiest about
ending it with him,
she tried hard to think about what that must be like,
having a third variable in the situation,
a living, breathing, reason to
see it all through,
but she had no reassurance that it would ever be
over &
though she wanted to be that loyal woman,
that romantic movie love, who felt that there was some
kind of pride to be held in
sticking out the struggle
with the one that she loved so much,
she also wanted to
live her own life,
despite any questions about what “justice” was,
or about how others would size her up, with the
knowledge that she decided to
walk away.

but she felt that this was the only life,
that it was no picnic, that it had no intrinsic
compassion which would shed itself down upon her
in the guise of what others call “luck” or perhaps
even more absurdly, “divine intervention,”
no, she knew that her own candle was burning too,
so she hung up the phone &
left, of her own volition.