On Leaving

[ellajam]

Hi, 71, wishing you a joyous new year.
I like the idea and the strong, beautiful images but while this poem gets where it's going I think that the combination of punctuation marks and white space fails you here, it leaves me with a confusion that will not resolve. Some notes below.

Edit

We leave one step at a time:
the table after eating, a failing job,
a belief, the broken heart of a home
I wonder why you have rejected fractured for broken, it goes well with failing, or anything else that edges the important "heart of a home" away from cliche. It leaves me to believe you want a cliche here but for me it weakens your first line which I like, cliche or not.

the in-and-out of breath,
one hand against cold glass
Here especially I am having trouble, I am reading "cold glass black rocks". If I'm not meant to I need a stronger stop. If I'm meant to I'd prefer black between cold and glass, and still, for me the image below does not have your hand on the rock, but on the cold glass of the broken home above. Help me.

black rocks near Calumet,
green frothy water breaking
over them, and that Sunday afternoon
when the sky seemed to pull apart
like the innards of a cotton pillow

The dream-steps we tiptoe toward awakening,
the flowering summer mornings breaking away
toward autumn
Have you considered "with" instead of "the"?

Original

We leave one step at a time:
from the table after eating, a failing job,
certain beliefs, the broken heart of a home

the in-and-out of our breath,
one hand against cold glass

from the black rocks near Calumet,
green frothy water breaking
over them, and that Sunday afternoon
when the sky seemed to pull apart
like the innards of a cotton pillow

when we pretend
life is easier than it really is