For fifteen years I did my best<\/p>\n
To honor all those vows<\/p>\n
We shared before Goddess and man<\/p>\n
But I had to get out<\/p>\n
He had a mistress those last few years<\/p>\n
And I could not compete<\/p>\n
When I tried to intervene<\/p>\n
He’d knock me off my feet<\/p>\n
Her name was Alcohol, and I<\/p>\n
Had to make a choice<\/p>\n
To survive or lay down and die<\/p>\n
I had to find my voice<\/p>\n
So I filed all the paperwork<\/p>\n
That said this all ends here<\/p>\n
And every vow that came before<\/p>\n
Just had to disappear<\/p>\n
Divorce became my saving grace<\/p>\n
It’s how I did survive<\/p>\n
And two years later I got the call<\/p>\n
That I was the only one alive<\/p>\n
I barely heard the coroner<\/p>\n
When she told me he was gone<\/p>\n
I just hoped he’d found some peace<\/p>\n
Wherever he’d moved on<\/p>\n
So, for me, those vows they preach<\/p>\n
When they join two souls together<\/p>\n
Were only hollow promises<\/p>\n
That couldn’t last forever<\/p>\n
And people rarely understand<\/p>\n
The grief I carry with me<\/p>\n
For the man he was before the bottle<\/p>\n
Made us both so empty.<\/p>\n
~Mandy Kocsis\u00a92023~<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For fifteen years I did my best To honor all those vows We shared before Goddess and man But I had to get out He had a mistress those last few years And I could not compete When I tried to intervene He’d knock me…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1516,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,1136,441,5],"tags":[5765,1417,5827,683],"class_list":["post-129931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marathon-poem","category-official-marathon-prompts","category-poetry-prompt-responses","category-poetry-prompts","tag-2023poetrymarathon","tag-hour4","tag-mandyslandpoetry","tag-marriage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1516"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129931"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129931\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":129956,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129931\/revisions\/129956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}