No Title Necessary

No one tells you it doesn't get easier. 
You manage to get past that frantic baby stage two times over with one precious baby girl, and precocious baby boy.  You race through the crazy toddler years, and you think, finally, I will get the reprieve I have been waiting for....that little tiny bit of quiet back, or at least some small bit of independence from the years of minute by minute parenting.  The bits of peace and happy silence come, as does a child's independence, but it doesn't get easier.  The questions about why mommy and daddy fight and why an 8 year old girl "has to have" divorced parents, come more often than you imagined they would.  You sit on the eve of that divorce date and thought that too, would get easier. "That" being the relationship you essentially have to have with the Ex because he is the father of your children.  But it does not, has not, become easier.  The text from him today was "If you don't mind just telling me what you are after maybe we could move past this".  You stare at that text on your Blackberry, alone in your kitchen, for quite some time with one-word answers like "respect", "kindness", and "co-operation" dancing around in your head.  Instead you don't respond, not yet at least.  It isn't the kind of answer you text to the man you married 10 years ago that you don't even recognize today. 
So following the diminishing tantrums of the afternoon, where you just want to bang your head against the wall, wondering why tantrums still exist  (or is it just called attitude, now?) and you write.  You recall the better moments when your children were not fighting with each other, or with you.  You recall  last Christmas when the Ex came to your family's Christmas feast and you and he took your children ice skating. 
You recall and you write.  And you tell yourself, one day, it will get better.  And hopefully that one day is soon.

Not Broken

Goddam that we are here again, back in our good spot, the better spot when it's everything and it's more than even our best friendship and you say there is no one else, and I give us any day and night we want-not just Mondays- and soon I have to count down the days to another "see you soon" that will result in tears-mine- and maybe yours, but you hate to see or hear me cry, probably hate if you show the same so you will do that stare, clench the jaw, and with all of your strength and your mighty arms show me we will be fine, or at least we will pretend that I will try to be fine and I will miss you miss you miss you because goddam it, four and a half years is a long time and we never thought we'd be here still, again and again and all those countless hours and soon I will wait for the countdown that you come back home.

"you said it was dangerous after Sunday
and I knew you loved me"