A woman calls, a client
She has the money to start a divorce.

She's begged, she's borrowed from her family.
A bank.
A way to a new life.

She writes a check,
Feeling confident this is best for her children.
Get them away from the abuser.
The courts will know he's an abuser.

We should make women sign
An informed-consent form in this country
Before trying to get out of an abusive relationship
Leaving their abuser, I mean.

"WARNING!" it should say.
"The courts won't help, only process cases
on their very best day."

It seems so simple.
Keep abusers away from kids.

Trust me. It's not.

I talked with a fellow attorney the other day.
Mentioned CPOs
(Those things you get when some nasty bastard won't leave you alone.
I do a lot of those.)
He won't help people get CPOs.

Like it's a bad thing.
This guy defends drug dealers.
Rapists.
Baseball-bat wielding thugs.

But he doesn't help people get CPOs.

(I guess they're only for lowlifes.)

I suspect it's 'cause you get angry abusive people in your life.
The people you've obtained it against are mad at you.
The people you've obtained it for are scared.
Who wants that in their comfortably carpeted law office?

Who wants that in their LIFE?

Yeah, we just abandon them
It's just a nasty divorce.

They come into my office.
They say the same things.
They wonder why the court can't get it.
They feel like they were victimized again.

And they have kids, dealing with the trauma.
What looks to be just petty drama.

I say it before, I say it now, I'll say it again:
We can deal with this problem now
Or we can deal with this later
But we'll deal with it, all of us, somehow.

***

(PS, please note: I am actually in a much sunnier mood than this poem would indicate and life has been pretty daggone awesome. I love my job, and feel like I make a difference. It's just, the madness of the whole system gets, well, maddening sometimes.)