He has a mouth like morning
and picked me up
from the ground by the ten second rule,
the time it takes for one hundred thirty million
babies to open their mothers,
four hundred times he could have been
on the train to come back.

He says I say I’m sorry in circles
but Earth does it,
her new cycle every day,
why can’t I.

He should say
he is sorry in circles: there have
been nearly three hundred sixty five trains
since
we knew how to **** each others’
sadness through a straw
and not puke, he would try to swallow it all.

He must see me as
moss now, frizzy-haired, meant to be
laid to rest
on the floor for everyone to
trip over
because I am the reason that leap years exist -
the skipping stone, spread water
on the ones I love
so they’ll be heavy and sink with me.

He must taste recycled beauty on me,
the way new light
turns the beds of his lips pink.

(I could not be her)
he needs to say sorry until our hearts are
the same shade of blue
from suffocating below everyone,
the bottom of
the ocean waiting to resurface as a wave.