Masking my queerness
I hid from the world
Telling myself the dissolving of my marriage
Was wrought from nothing more than the years of his neglect
My aloneness and angst, staring at the back of his head
As he poured himself into a virtual escape
Disregarding me, my child
Turned his agony into my unending purgatory
She shown a light upon my misery
Beckoned me out of the shadows
Promised companionship and love
Support and understanding.
Once won, how quickly she shifted!
The garden ground I stood firmly upon
Liquified into a hellscape of mire
Choking muck pulled me into a swirl of chaos
Painting my skin with hues of shame
She decried me fake and weak; insecure and narcissistic
Touting her prowesses to cut me into further pieces
While she free road off the sweat of my back
Draped in requirement, confused by her relentless badgering
My throat choked by the words of accolades she received from without
My daily existence was a mirage
My sorrow hidden behind mirrors more distorted than the worst funhouse nightmare
Convinced it was me, that I was the problem
I quested to restore the paradise I’d been promised
In so doing, I lost sight of even the meagerest signs of myself
Isolated and beaten down, living became existence. Became torture.
The sky was no longer blue
But a putrid shade of green
Only to deny its beauty was to pronounce the ugly I lived with
And in so doing, invite lightning bolts to char my flesh
I would have perished in the dark flames
Only, the light of the eyes of my child
Looking at me through her own fear
Reminded me I was not invisible
With one last herculean bought of strength
Convinced I would not survive
I heaved out my tormentor
The demon who had been my lover