I am sorry I tried calling you that one time, when I was drunk off lonely & whiskey & 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 & 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 & independent of my life. That my idea of you that crosses my empty highway mind is not you. & 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 & 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, & my skin felt taut & sunburned, so red & wanting to scream. I cared & I still do. & I still get the urge to hollow my arms so you can fit better, you-this new person who has grown & loved & spilled over into a newer night. I forget so often that I can’t carry you like I once did, & that you don’t know how to hold me anymore. Even now, I’m still apologizing.
Alex Bang!
‘In Which the Poet Apologizes’
