Time Served

what brought him to this place she wants to forget---doesn’t matter, didn’t matter, because she stood by her man when it happened & he had been a great man on the outside, he had been everything that she needed & she thought that her search was over--- so close to happiness she began to taste it in the air, every morning, so close to a simple peace, she actually began to believe that it was possible. the final straw, the last “offense,” the one that landed him inside for a long stretch, this changed things, to put it mildly--- he had to work on himself, in order to survive, in his own mind, all for the sake of her, all for the sake of what was waiting for him when he got out---because he had been told that he would get out--- because, that is what they will tell you. and no matter how many statistics get thrown around, no matter how many faces that came in & went out, through that revolving door, he thought he’d be the special case, the one that would do everything that he was told, the one that would begin to walk a straight line which would eventually lead to his own personal “promised land.” but every time she got up in the morning & looked in the mirror, the strain began to show, the time being served by her, days, weeks, months, they added up quicker than she thought they would & the conversations through the glass, they just weren’t cutting it anymore. she knew mother’s who were serving time on the outside with the fathers of their children locked away & on the days when she felt the guiltiest about ending it with him, she tried hard to think about what that must be like, having a third variable in the situation, a living, breathing, reason to see it all through, but she had no reassurance that it would ever be over & though she wanted to be that loyal woman, that romantic movie love, who felt that there was some kind of pride to be held in sticking out the struggle with the one that she loved so much, she also wanted to live her own life, despite any questions about what “justice” was, or about how others would size her up, with the knowledge that she decided to walk away. but she felt that this was the only life, that it was no picnic, that it had no intrinsic compassion which would shed itself down upon her in the guise of what others call “luck” or perhaps even more absurdly, “divine intervention,” no, she knew that her own candle was burning too, so she hung up the phone & left, of her own volition.