Had I remained married we would today
celebrate thirty-seven years together.
I’d have lived those things rather than these.
For better or worse these many others now make me up.
For better or worse I am now a person who stands mystified
by the long marriages of others, the years of accommodation,
collaboration and conflict, the volumes of shared memories and milestones.
My own are a crazy quilt of bits and pieces this one shared with that one
that one with this, some of whom I no longer see or care to see.
I cannot know what other I would be, had I stayed.