~The End~

If I could go back to that night and that bar
I think I would have never met you.
Left you sitting there~
that silly grin
and that awful karaoke music
and go back home to safety.
But I'd never have met my two babies
or known this love for them.
Yet this anger,
this hate
and all this bitterness I feel towards you--
Sometimes it holds me still
and consumes everything in me
that dares breathe hope.
You are my past,
thank God,
and, I pray,
the man that our kids will be able to lean 
on someday soon.
For now I ask, how do I keep this disdain
out of the very words I speak
and out of the corner of my lip
where it turns to a sneer?
When will that awful taste go from my mouth
as I speak your name?
You are not the man I fell for that night
but the memories of that man I gave 16 years to are finally coming clear.
Your anger, your meanness and your abuse 
are part of my past...
Forever in yesterday
but only because I need them to remind me of what
love isn't....
For our children I cannot
will not
allow you to influence even one more moment
of their lives 
with even a bit of your controlling and awful anger....