How to Leave a Marriage
CNF and Original Artwork published in Rejection Letters
Get sober.
Repeat 2-3x Take up writing.
Take up gardening.
Take up every maple tree in your yard. Bury one in the clay pot he never used behind the potted lilacs leaning against a fence. Replace with the roots of an English Rowan, and circle everything you own in salt.
Buy black candles.
Buy permanent black ink pens.
Take inventory of what you consider weeds.
Take in the nightshade berries outside your front door. Squeeze 453 nightshade berries through cheesecloth, adding one part vinegar and one part discarded Ketel One, dripping into a small container you transfer into another small container. Stain your sweater. Stain your table, stain your containers, stain your hands. Stain everything permanent bloodberry red. Discard the damp aftermath and transfer to a glass jar. Label: For Spells.
Buy garden gloves.
Buy a garden shovel you return to buy a crescent moon shaped scythe hand-carved in Eastern Europe that won’t arrive until the time is just right.
Get sober again.
Take up three snowdrop flowers and place them in a wicker basket. Search and hope and cry until you gather the mother bulb too.
Pray for the mother’s rebirth as you bury her in the moongarden, discarding all the dead plants and leaves again and again and again until you hit the spiders and the thorns and the dirt ascends to ash.
Buy spider killer.
Take up smoking.
Take up painting.
Take up love.
Take up your own baneful version of religion.
Take up three seeds of hope and place them in the glass jar next to your scythe and red ink. Label: For Spells.
Buy more black candles.
Buy another sweater, this time in black. Buy everything black. Buy so much black your ancestors recognize your grief. Grieve what was and what is, grieve illusions and holograms. Grieve everything you’ve ever let go, letting the tears stain your face and ruin your eyes.
Pray to Saint Lucy.
Buy under-eye cream.
Buy new foundation and an overpriced makeover at Ulta salon. Let them take beforeand after pictures of you. Let everyone take after pictures of you.
Buy a new mirror.
Take up calligraphy.
Take up signing your name on everything. Take up signing on checks and bank accounts and retirement accounts and one job application. Take up signing your name with stars and hearts. Sign as it is, as it was. Sign as it will be. Sign it with new names and a crush’s name. Sign it as only your first name and middle initial. Sign and turn your loops into invocations. Dots and crossed letters as Sigils. Sign it as you did when you were 9. Sign it as you will when you turn 40. Sign your name, as Ariel and Tritan. As in Eternal Sunshine. As in new and broken promises. Sign your name as a promise to remember to forget parts worth forgetting.
Sign divorce papers.
Buy child-size garden gloves.
Teach your daughters how to pray.
