Wednesday, January 17, 2018

You Can't Have Everything

After the divorce
He'll keep the garbage


All the trash
We’ve accumulated
For the past seven years

That goes to him


I get the cat
The cat I don’t like
The cat I didn’t even know we had
Because neither of us
Has been home
For three months


He says he didn’t buy a cat
I say neither did I
We do rock, paper, scissors
And I get the cat


Motherfucker

That’s the cat’s name
Motherfucker
I mean, what the fuck else
Am I supposed to call him?

Settlement?


He suggested we call the cat Settlement
And I put my cigarette out
Against a photo of his mother
That he keeps in the living room


He wasn’t phased
He hated his mother
It was just my way of saying
I would hurt you if I could


But I can’t


He gets my twin sister
And good luck to him
She’s even more of a bitch than I am


He has to call her twice a day
And make sure she doesn’t ruin her sobriety
And that’s--


Well, that’s a full-time job


I get his brother
Which is fine
He’s stupid
But he’s not loud


He’s that quiet kind of stupid
That makes the world go ‘round


I get the piano I can’t play
He gets the magazine subscription I forgot to cancel


He gets the children
Which is a relief


They’re almost teenagers
And I’m all set with that
Thank you very much


I’ve never laid a finger on any of my kids
But one teenage eyeroll
After I ask them to clean their rooms
And I would have beaten them
Like a pinata at a quinceanera


I’m better off with the cat


He gets the anniversary date
In case he wants to use it
With someone else


I get our honeymoon
The island
The hotel
The activities


Screwing on the balcony
While Adele plays
In the background


Oh yeah, I get Adele
He fought me on that one


He fought harder for Adele
Than for the kids

But I won


He loves ‘One and Only’
I love it too
We used to make love to that song
And he’d leave it on a loop
So we could go at it for hours
And think it was just four and a half minutes


Have you ever heard that song?
It’s perfect


It’s a perfect song


And we were perfect


Then we got married


Marriage doesn’t make you imperfect
It just makes you realize
How fucking imperfect you are


It ruins the illusion


He gets Halloween
I get Christmas


Not with the kids
Just, in terms of celebrating


I get to celebrate Christmas
He gets to dress up on Halloween
And on the holidays we do not get in the divorce
We have to sit home and cry
Over how we’ve destroyed our lives
Because we didn’t have the guts to tough it out
And be miserable forever
The way our parents were


The way his parents were, I mean
My parents actually loved each other
Poor bastards


He gets to call me once a year
And hang up


I get to stalk him on social media
Every three months


He gets to tell people it was my fault
And I get to tell people it was his fault
But neither one of us gets to believe it
When we say it


That last part sucks, but--


Oh well

You can’t have everything

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