I am sorry about the letters I wrote you
in red ink, the swells and valleys
of your body that I never
learned to love.
I am sorry for making you a war zone,
for the carnage and the crime,
the cruel topography of the boot prints I
left inside of your skull.

Especially those. You see, I was taught how to
choke the things I love
with fists stained blue and bleeding,
to shake till they are limp as a rag doll
and cry over their prone form,
but never how to touch the planes of your face
without leaving frost on your wings,
ice behind the shutters of your eyes.

I’m sorry for all the time you spent
tending the garden of your sorrow,
I’m sorry that your tears
didn’t help the flowers bloom. I’m sorry that
the bathroom mirror knows you best
wild-eyed at 2 am, asking it ragged and heartsore
who will love me now. who could
love me.

I’m sorry that when I say I’m trying to be better
it sounds like an apology for not being good enough.
I’m sorry that there are days when your poems
read like grocery lists of all the lies
I told you when you cried.  

Forgive me.
I’m sorry we never learned how to
fall into and not through,
sorry the slopes of the letters in the words
we speak aren’t the bridges we mean
them as.

I’m sorry I buried you under the couch
in that therapist’s office. your tears were
saltwater I couldn’t allow myself to drink.
I lived on a desert island
and could not permit myself the
pleasure of a mirage.

I’m sorry that I never believed you could be
someone I could understand.

I’m sorry that you’ve spent so much
time looking for someone to
love you.
I’m sorry it couldn’t be me.