SORRY
sorry I called your salad transgressive
sorry I thought you said “garbage sale”
sorry I vowed to love you “like time loves a face”
sorry I hissed “redefine elegance” between reps
sorry I said “form is emptiness & emptiness is form” instead of “those jeans look great”
sorry I was wearing our half-empty tandem horse costume at the time of my arrest
[re: your wedding] sorry about the tambourine
sorry I counted how many lukewarm crepes it would take to cover my corpse
sorry I stared down the years like an idiot while our relationship deepened of its own accord
sorry my recitation of the Bhagavad Gita filled the breakfast nook with an atmosphere of despair
sorry I kept noting the things that drive you crazy but don’t bother me & vice versa
sorry I held out for decency, despite a gazillion horrors shit-storming to the contrary
sorry I experience the world in a way that I can’t understand, let alone explain & sorry for what I assume is a
similar predicament on your end
sorry I suggested “fireworks salesperson” as a possible career path for your nephew
sorry I likened time to a giant drain into which everything we love disappears, but not sorry for noting the
the incomprehensible frequency with which everything loveable continues to happen
sorry I said “the moon landing was real, but everything else is fake” to your brother-in-law
sorry I suggested we “paint the dog” within earshot of your family
sorry I muttered “the mail sends us” in my sleep
sorry I insisted it was “valt & sinegar”
sorry I gasped “vibes” into the endless night sky
sorry I tried to work “Jericho Trumpet” into our love language
sorry I insisted “everything but actually” over & over again until there was no one to disagree
sorry our love grew so large it included the entire earth & then the universe
sorry I referred to myself as a “leak without a bucket” in the same room as a cop
sorry I fell in love with the world/forgot my passcode
sorry I invoiced your child my standard life coach flat rate
sorry I asked to text your baby
sorry I said you had the body of a poet
sorry I called your inner child a “curator of despairs”
sorry I referred to your worldview as “above the knee”
sorry I suggested we play “find the tab the noise is coming from”
sorry I used the word discourse too many times at breakfast
sorry I offered to console your pet with fresh blood
sorry I hissed “virtue isn’t heritable” at your grandparents
sorry I noted the inherent limitations of your second-person perspective in their
fundamentally second-personal normative moral and political theory
sorry I muttered, “postmodernity is what happens when modernity recognizes it’s a tradition”
sorry I murmured “time wastes us” into your baby monitor
sorry I got down on one knee at the Toyotathon sales event of the year
sorry I told your imaginary friend to keep it real
ART
an avant-garde
art piece
in which you
spend your life
never making
any
DEADFRIENDS
all your
dead friends
cheering your
murderer
on
HISTORY
history teaches
not even ridiculous hats
keep us alive
ONCE
once
I stopped drinking
for 20 years
worried too much
underneath
inconsolable
stars
gasped
looked around
but
no one else saw
how terrifying