“Your first divorce is trickiest”
my former colleague said.
“Your second’s hard, a little less.
your third is not so bad.”

“This is your first. Your time to learn
first-hand experience
of seeing all you’ve built just burn.
The pain will now commence.”

““Some shit you cannot seem to solve
you need for other shit
in which you also are involved
but don’t want to admit.”

“Don’t make your home in lies that soothe.
There’s facts that you will miss,
and all that can be killed by truth
eventually is.”

“You can be full of strength and fun,
be smart and fit and thin,
when someone you have loved is gone
that still will do you in.”

“You’re exiled from your home and heart
and most of what you had,
so cling to friends and work and art,
but most to mom and dad.”

“You should have known it long ago:
this marriage could not last.
It hurts like hell but even so,
it’s moving to the past.”

“You know consensual divorce?
Both choose to be less close
and to remain good friends of course?
This isn’t one of those.”

“You paid a horrifying cost.
Without the bonds you’ve found
or been born with, you’d be so lost
you might no more be found.”

“She broke an oath she swore to you.
That’s sinful, so it hurts.
It would hurt less if you not knew
it hurts her even worse.”

“You think you’re hurt, but that’s not it.
You have been traumatized.
Your mind is now a silent pit
for Silence to arise.”

“You’re certainly not at your best,
but still it’s fair to say:
for someone clinically depressed,
you’re holding up okay.”

“The kids are hit the worst by this.
Their mom is too far gone.
You’re still their dad. Your duty is
to limit damage done.”

“You must have Love to guide your acts
and Truth to guide your words,
to help look deeply for the facts
and comfort that which hurts.”

“Depression, when it is so strong
you barely can think straight,
will lie about how it’s not wrong,
or permanent, or fate.”

“If truth considered as a whole
can kill something, it should.
To catch a lie and help it fall
is ethical and good.”

“Excuses are quite useful when
they’re just the place you start.
Go deeper, ask and ask again
and work towards the heart.”

“And even more importantly,
it works upon your own
excuses – question forcefully
and look, you will have grown.”

“You don’t need love. You are enough.
You are not love itself.
So losing perfect, total love
you still don’t lose yourself.”

“You feel depressed? Okay. Take note,
it’s in your repertoire
of feelings, but do not promote
it into what you ‘are’.”

“There is no way you can avoid
that everything you love
will be devoured by the void
and still that’s good enough.”

“The joy of consciousness is all,
ways there available
in all perceptions big and small.
You’re always capable.”

“Forgiveness is to cease to need
a thing from who did wrong.
No recompense. Not see them bleed.
Then you can get along.”

“We do not know the limits of
true open-heartedness,
true love of truth, true truthful love,
to heal our brokenness.”

“The path to being truly free
is making discipline
a self-fulfilling prophecy
of how you’re gonna win.”

“What gives a meaning, in a way,
to all the shit you face
is making sure she’ll never live
within your parents’ place.”

“You must have private sweet delight
and public happiness.
You need them both to feel alright
and you deserve no less.”

“Now take your medicine from space.
Leave noise and work and phones.
Arrive within a sunny place.
Drink sun into your bones.”

“The streets and garden paths you roam
are sunlit just the same.
This town is still as much your home
as back before she came.”

“Relaxing lets your heart expand.
It feels like spreading wings,
like coming home to where you stand
beyond these tiny things.”

“Do not stay lost in busy tracks
of wounds that fortune deals.
The medicine is not complex.
Mere Beauty is what heals.”

“A flood of Beauty rolling in
can really save your day.
Your streams of anger, grief and sin
are simply flushed away.”

“The past is only made of things
that it’s too late to change.
Now look for what the future brings
or what you can arrange.”

When joy came knocking on my door,
it seemed so strange to me
to get to say, like long before:
“Come in! Long time no see!”

Today I’m feeling gratitude
she never gave a damn
and never saw the magnitude
of who I really am.