A poem from July, 2018

I wrote this poem on 31st July 2018, a few days after leaving my marriage. The reference to Juliet is a potential middle name I was going to take, a name that connected me to my biological father, whom I’d been staying with one weekend a month when I would go to London to study for my Masters course. About 15 months later, I did change my name by deed poll, but took the middle name Phoenix instead - and of course, there are references to that too within this poem.

I’ve changed a few words since then. There were a couple of tiny parts that didn’t feel quite right or true.

* * *

[Untitled]

Blinking cursor, new day. Words I want to write, things I need to say. Don’t know how to access them, fingers tapping away. Pen in hand feels somehow slow, like truth will run away. Waiting in the quiet, for words I know are true. How to capture ten years of love, of me and you. Everything is changing but something stays the same. My wildly beating heart’s on fire, I’m birthing a new name. I’m rising like the Phoenix, I’m finding my way home, to the surname I kept with me till the day I took your own. I’m calling in the Juliet, the daughter of the man who left my mother high and dry, who froze in fear and ran. I’m claiming the forgiveness for the ways that I betrayed, like the men and women who years ago paved the stones on which I’ve laid. I’m rooted in foundations that are aching for the truth, as I let go of all the beauty that I have built with you. I look back on our wedding still as the happiest day, even as I knew deep down inside that day would pave the way, for a life that’s safe, a love that held, soft place to rest our heads, for a space to bring home weary hearts and a tiny pit of dread, somewhere deep down in my body, deeper than the mind can see, sprouting tiny shoots of disappointment, watching slowly as my dreams became somewhere hard to access, faint pained echo of my soul, and today I’m waking up my dreams, no more marriage yet I’m whole. I look back on how these ten years served me in the truest way, and I know deep in my bones today I was in a golden cage. I need life to be exciting, need to go and open doors, need to find within myself the maven, phoenix, witch and whore. Need to seek out new adventures, have to tread the untrod path, time to pour my time into my work and to re-explore my heart. Simple rhyming cannot capture all that you have meant to me, but this morning this simplicity is helping set me free. I will love you with a depth that I doubt will ever leave, and I thank you for acknowledging that I need to be set free. I am rising like the Phoenix, I am flying from the cage, kissing holy ground and knowing that leaving this has

changed

my

life.