Splitting Up

-- By SkylarPolansky - 23 Apr 2012

Child

Birth

From you I was born. You held me, carried me through the hallway. It was not you who wrapped me in a blanket but it was from you that I drew warmth. You were my world and I became yours. You created me and you continued to create me as I learned to use my feet to run, my fingers to draw, and my words to bring my insides out.

Splitting

You used your words to twist my insides. You used my words in the way they were not meant. Cut up little fragments - re-positioned letters from the letters I wrote to create the story you wanted to see. The story that allows you to separate. There was no way for you to do what you had to do without making me evil. To win the war you inevitably lose battles. I never knew I was a battle. You killed the me that I saw in your eyes. But my eyes shed the tears. Tears in flesh so deep within me they will never get the oxygen they need to scar over. Before I was fully formed you tore me apart from who I was becoming.

Death Immemorial

Do you ever look at a person and see a statue? Or look at a statue and see a person?

Like an artist you chose the materials out of which to make your self-portrait. You made a baby, out of which to carve a statue in your reflection. You turned me into a statue - a little round-topped marble piece to play with. A pawn. To be moved, and potentially sacrificed so you could keep your kingdom.

To preserve your image you turned me into stone. And when I look at you now I see stone - a hard surface protecting only more surface layers inside. There is no way to peel the layers of a statue - if you chip away at it, in the end there's nothing but scattered fragments and dust. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. You are a memory. A representation of a life we once lived. I know I will never reach that person again. In your attempt to preserve your self-portrait you re-made yourself. What is left is a memory cast in stone.

Opposing Party

Union

From love is born the greatest security and the greatest confusion.

We connected. You let me feel your inside, yet maintain my perspective as an outsider. I learned to anticipate what you wanted for dinner by knowing what you ate for lunch. I knew the position you fell asleep in and what time you woke up. I knew who you'd notice when we walked into a room and at whom you'd laugh after we left. I learned to know what you wanted before you wanted it. I knew you.

Splitting

To know somebody so well and then not at all. I think you'll go left with a memory and you go right. I think you'll choose right and you keep choosing wrong. The piece of me that lived in you is now unsheltered, and the piece of you that lived in me is unrecognizable. I listen to your words as they spill out of your puppet esquire and I don't recognize you. You who were once me. Me who was once us. Now a versus lives between us. Ver precedes us but truth will be the last thing found in this proceeding.

Death Ongoing

In this death I feel like a newborn. But I already had a life...

Somebody pressed re-set without me knowing.

What died is the future we envisioned. You placed a handful of glistening sand in my hand and said "we will be this." The granules slowly slipped away through the space between the lifeline and love-line etched into my palm. I didn't notice because I was too busy replenishing the top, creating more memories as our history slipped away. Then my hand was empty and I looked up and we were gone. Now all I can do is sift through the desert of memory in which I now crouch, trying to identify the grains still imprinted with the vision of the future we both wanted. As long as I stay here clawing at sand I will never re-fill my palm. But it's better than looking up at miles and miles of sand and no direction in which to find my future.

Counselor

Meeting

Upon meeting I know how much fight a client has in them. How much I'll be able to draw this out. It's like training a gladiator - dress them up and make them think it's about honor and sure as shit they'll fight to the death.

It's about making them feel like it's a game. But it's 40 games played at once so nobody knows the rules. It's blackjack and the house always wins. It's chess but there's no timer and it always ends in a stalemate. It's Life - boring and drawn out and they waste hours playing until there's a split-level house on the board and no winner.

Splitting

Fees. Let's deal first with attorney's fees. I can spend all the time I have in this paneled room but first we need to know who will be paying my fees. Settled? Good.

What you need to do is gather evidence. Letters, financials, pictures - the more evidence the better. Evidence of what? It doesn't matter - let the opposing party figure it out. The judge doesn't care. I told you it's all a game. You want to win right?

The kids - nobody asked them but I think it's clear...

The house - take a chainsaw and split it. Not possible? There's a foundation, a structure. Fine, more than I can say for the marriage.

We covered attorney's fees right? No court date yet - adjourned until after Judge's August vacation. Plenty of depositions and document review in the meantime.

No End

For me this game will never end. Time is on my side.

The strength of this writing is its evocation of emotional depth from the spare economy of its language. That's also its weakness, because we cannot be sure that we have understood the narrative it implies.

From an artistic point of view, that may not be a drawback. But in the present context, art has to join itself to science closely enough that you can be sure the reader has correctly understood the three human relationships being described, and their relationship to one another. The remaining editorial task is to eliminate ambiguity wherever possible without harming the effects that are the raison d'etre of the style.