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Oh man. What an important lesson. And you’ll hear it virtually nowhere in our victory-fixated culture.

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YES! "Devastation and ruination are gifts in the big picture of a life". At the top of my daily gratitude list is the fact that the spectacular implosion of my marriage and my entire life at 57 provided me with the opportunity to wake up and re-evaluate. Took a little time to get beyond the revenge or redemption narratives, but 8 years later I'm living my life, my way, and continuining to learn and grow.

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Ariadne Thanks Theseus for Abandoning Her

Ioanna-Veronika Warwick

I hear you married my sister, the one

famous for her blue eyes.

You think you can control her.

No one is harder to control

than a woman who spends her life

before the closed doors of mirrors.

She fingers her necklaces,

combs her endless hair,

and gets what she wants:

a man, a child.

We with more mind are in love

with the shadow everything casts,

the watery color of doubt.

I was the path home

that unwound behind you.

I held you by the thread of breath,

hollowed out slim foothold.

Who could endure such love?

Your ship growing smaller

against the flawless blue,

the tapering black sail,

tried to teach me the essential

stone, but I only cried.

I cried until star-blind sleep,

I cried bruised by the sun.

Then among the voices

of silence I heard

an overlay of sound

preparing for its meaning.

If you hadn’t left me

I’d never hear,

talking and laughing,

serving heated wine.

If the horizon hadn’t swallowed you,

I’d believe in it still,

let it hold me in like a wall.

Deceiver, I thank you.

Betrayer, I bless you.

You can’t imagine

the labyrinths I travel.

I am entering such music,

you seem no longer a giant.

Time pares you down

to a roadside post,

a place I had to pass.

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Oof, the formatting!!!

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Found this poem something approaching like 20 years ago and it stays with me always (and her whole body of work is trembling perfection, highly rec). At first, the prostrated irony of thanking one’s betrayer, deciever, et al., deeply appealed, but over time, I have hardened a bit on that: I do not thank anyone for the _gift_ of taking a hunk out of my side, that seems like a chump’s game, and fuck you.

The whole thing still stands tho. I deeply believe in it, really.

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This was really excellent timing for me, thank you so much. I've had some messy emotional relational stuff this week and impending, and I was ABSOLUTELY retreating into my easy stories about who’s always been wrong about me and who deserves to be taught a lesson. Thanks for the reminder that I can tell new ones! How lovely to remember that I have that agency!!

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Damn, great reflections and truth there. I gotta reorient my mind to find joy in these dark moments, because while i'm tired of experiencing them, they're gonna be worse if I don't find the joy.

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