Mediation

Mediation is the
not-quite-enough-but-could-be-worse,
the art of what you can live with. 
But there are no mediators for this heart,
no person to teach me to accept
less than I want,
no acceptable compromise
between what you give and
what I have already got. 

Even the counselor sees that
the distance from me to you and back again
is not traversable, the path blocked
by boulders of resentment
(my hand on hers, in her)
and barriers of regrets (your tense
late-night frights
at the unwelcome phone calls, your lover silent
when I lift the receiver). 

He says to breathe and let go,
the counselor does,
that to start over we have to let go,
that you are not going to get anywhere if
you keep bringing this up,
words encompassing us both
but eyes glaring at me
sick of my obstructions and obfuscations. 

It was a revenge fuck, it was a pity fuck,
it was a how-did-this-happen-to-us and
how-did-we-let-things-get-this-far fuck,
or so she says,
and why won’t you understand that though I did it
to hurt you, it hurt me more, wailing now
with manufactured anguish, playing to the counselor
for all that she is worth, the lying bitch, her tears
accompanied by heaving tits
in the hopes of stirring up his sympathy
and my jealousy. 

Then he says a lot of things about
trust and forgiveness and openness, says them
because we pay him
– and what a waste of money that is – for it
(this the last-ditch effort a bout of
better-than-expected make-up sex
had me agreeing to) and not because he thinks
they will help since our problems are beyond
the scope of what
he is used to dealing with. 

I am sure that he does believe
in his god of mediation, in the curative power
of counseling, and our intractable marriage is an exception,
an outlier of bitterness and hatred,
which cannot threaten the foundation
of his therapeutic worldview. 
Or maybe even then I give us too much credit,
our problems perhaps boring and routine,
unfixable in exactly the same way
as his upcoming 2 o’clock appointment.

He shows up day after day going through the steps,
and what he sees in me, in her, is what he sees
in every couple that walks into his office.

And maybe while he sits there leaning back
in the chair spouting the gospel of give-and-take
his mind is miles away,
thinking of his wife (or what I assume is his wife,
the red-headed looker in the gilt-framed family portrait
on his desk, surrounded by two equally enchanting
moppets that are testament to a happier life –
or at least a better attempt at faking it)
and what she is preparing for dinner,
or the sex they had last night,
or his graduate student piece on the side. 

That angers me into silence. 

For the next seventeen minutes
I say nothing, counting them down on the
small grandfather clock (what a pretentious affectation,
but then again I expected no less from this prick,
and of course she chose him, he came highly recommended
although none of the couples
ended up staying together so really,
how good could he be), taking perverse satisfaction
in her increasing agitation and in the knowledge
that the divorce papers were signed, sealed and
about to be served, the courier
more likely than not already downstairs.