This Divorce

With apologies to Rumi.

May this decree be signed expeditiously and this divorce be soon over.

May it be amicable. But not too amicable. I refuse to vacation together. Who do we think we are, Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin?

May this divorce be like oil and water, separated indefinitely. In fact, let us be parallel lines. You go your way, I’ll go mine, never touching again. Ever.

May this conscious uncoupling be full of freedom: from the nightly whistle of your CPAP machine and from your mother’s Christmas raisin bread pudding.

Our every day a day where I no longer have to rewash the same load of laundry because you left it sitting overnight, where I no longer have to listen to you explain the plot of a TV show I’m already watching, while I’m watching it. No longer have to hear, for the 1,800th time, how you bumped into Robert De Niro at the Tribeca Whole Foods self-checkout and endorsed his chantilly cake— thereby altering the course of cinema.

May this divorce be a sign of closure, a “clean and completed chapter,” in the words of Meghan, our marriage counselor, what a rip-off that was.

May this marriage have a fair exchange of assets and a good lawyer, an omen to download the dating apps and become a noncommittal problem for an entirely new set of people.

I am out of words to describe how thrilled I am to starfish-sprawl across the entire bed.