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Imagining Elizabeth Gilbert's Situation

In English, it’s called divorce.
One life is sliced into two
after the hard work of forcing
the two together to begin with.
But in my basic Italian
all I could think to say was:
Abbiamo rotto –
We broke it.
How could I begin to explain
all the reasons we didn’t work,
how we drifted apart and
how you refused to admit it?
How could I begin to explain
that I’d already drifted so far overseas,
my mind and heart wandering to new places
and not content to be trapped here,
on cold sheets in a new house
thinking about the children that I didn’t want?
Italian was too beautiful to taint with our story
and that simple phrase worked well enough
because after everything, we were so broken
and the damage was irreparable. After everything
it was nice to only have those two words between us.
About the author: Kate is a writer, wife, mom of two pups and a full-time RVer. She has experienced loss and grief. Kate has found healing through her writing.