My Marriage Ended Today: Papers soaked in ink.

Amanda Clark-Rudolph
1 min readApr 22, 2023
Photo by Romain Dancre on Unsplash

My marriage ended today.

The papers, soaked in ink.

The dissolution; tangibly official.

Due to a previously missed notation,

we both found ourselves sitting side by side…

in a bank…

with a pale-faced woman

awkwardly holding a pen and a stamp.

Each page, we initialed together,

and I found the process so cold and tenuous.

Every stroke evoking an array of highs and lows

that ricocheted through me–

scorching my insides with barricades of opposites

like loss and redemption, future and memories…

At one point, it almost felt like I was living a dream,

or an outside observer peering from above,

floating like a broken cloud,

delicately removed from the permanence of it all.

On the ride home,

I found myself looking up to the sky

like I always do when feeling down or lost,

repeating once again to myself,

“We are going to be okay.

We are going to be okay.

We ARE okay."

But this time, although weak from fight,

I truly believed it.

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Amanda Clark-Rudolph

Amanda is a work at home mama who contributes to various magazines and blogs. Contact her at writeonfreelancingllc@gmail.com for interview or blog articles.