Walking Away
To be driven mad is nothing really.
With very little effort, the
desired effect can
easily be achieved.
All you need is a set of car keys.

Maybe I’ve oversimplified, but
I still don’t think there’s much
effort involved.
Perhaps car keys,
a shared history
and allot of attitude.
The end result can be acquired with this
and the mere initial catalyst of
a marriage license.

The document doesn’t
have to be in the vehicle, as
it works all too well from a distance.
I believe my mom and dad kept
theirs stashed in a musty study’s file cabinet.
There in its envelope,
it might be neatly tucked away
at the rear of a dark drawer, yet
though hundreds of miles away, they’d
remain aware of its heavy presence.
Sitting there,
side by side,
staring away at the
long stretch of asphalt they
still had to traverse,
the darkness of which that
envelope dwelled,
dwelled with them as well.

Mention the word ‘Marriage’ to those of
a poetic mindset
and that extra chromosome
just there on the DNA spiral
is that which makes us
swoon romantic.
Marriage.
Ah yes, marriage.
What a delightful notion.

And then there are those of us
who in our formative childhood psyches
had it constantly reiterated to them that
one cannot have marriage without
divorce.
How can you possibly conceive of
the ultimate marriage
without the inevitable
culminative progression towards
divorce?

This was my indoctrination.
Love equals love, but
marriage equals hate.
Am I being brutal?
Have I overstepped my bounds?

Okay then.
So try this.
What is your earliest childhood memory?

Again. This is important.
What is you earliest childhood memory?
Was it sitting on grandpa’s lap?
A fluffy puppy licking your face?
Making ice cream on a hot summer’s day?

Mine is that of my mother
throwing a huge black telephone at my father
and it ringing aloud as it
flew past my head on its way to the far wall.

Marriage?
Marriage equals violence.
Marriage equals
perpetual arguments.
Arguments that would inevitably end with
my mother grabbing her car keys
and slamming every door on her way to the driveway.
There outside,
I’d hear the final slam,
the rev of an engine and screech of tires.
Marriage license.
Driver’s License.
License to leave.
Yes, she was driven.
Driven mad.

And then…
And then silence.
Then you
sitting on your hands,
on a very large couch,
in a very large,
very quiet house.

Marriage?
Marriage equals quitting.
Equals giving up.
Equals walking away.
Marriage equals
abandonment.
You know, like this small boy,
left on a couch,
there coming to realize far too early that
the one great lesson you can
learn from all this is that
no one will always be there for you;
that everything ends before its time.

Such childhood revelations are
not without their consequences.
We are destined to carry them with us.
Indeed, everything does end before its time.
Like your experience of some poet
standing there before you.
A poet you hope will convey some
final climatic epiphany of how
love surmounts all
and instead,
he simply...

©06 Jack Hubbell