I am sorry I tried calling you that one time
when I was drunk off lonely and whiskey and Four Loko.
It’s just that your hands were so good at keeping
me together. My body still sometimes collapses into the shape
of your mouth. I am such a soft, malleable thing, and it has taken me
too long to realize that you are also this. More important,
that you are more than my memories. That you exist free
and independent of my life. That my idea of you that crosses
my empty highway mind is not you. And with this, I am so sorry
for all the nights I tried to split your heart open just so
I had a place to rest. I did not understand how you were no
longer me anymore, how the you I had in me was a postcard
and not the city. Forgive the fury, the angry prayers tossed towards
the dark of my 3AM ceiling that were meant for your neck.
You were asleep that night where we started to break, and my skin
felt taut and sunburned, so red and wanting to scream, but Cassidy
told me that it makes sense why this was so frustrating. The rusting
of four years should make me mad. It meant I cared. And I still do.
And I still get the urge to hollow my arms so you can fit better, you
this new person who has grown and loved and spilled over into
a newer night. I forget so often that I can’t carry you like I once did,
and that you don’t know how to hold me anymore.
Even now, I’m still apologizing.
by Alex Dang
