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