I just want to say that I'm sorry,
(and I know that you think I apologize too
often, but truth is I can't help it)
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, they roll off my tongue
like the citrus lemonade taste in your mouth,
the kind lemons make when their skin is too ripe,
it's the kind you try and wash down with water
but it never really goes away. It's strange,
because my apologies aren't a habit,
they're my way of telling you that I'm not
perfect, please don't ever think I am (our
illusion, I've learned, will always be shattered
at some point or another.) Some people are
innately drawn to the smell of coffee grounds, or
freshly cut hair, I think I'm drawn by sorry, sorry,
that's all I can manage to speak. When people say;
I love you, the only thing I can do is smile;
you probably wanted to crawl away the first time
you said it
I just stared back at you, smiling, like maybe I
was seeing you, but then again, maybe
you were just a ghost, and I thought that perhaps
if I looked hard enough, I could make out he allusive
shimmer of a (no longer) existence that pained me.
and then I blurted,
Did you know that the moon is constantly orbiting
around the Earth?
To which you nodded and laughed nervously,
but what I meant is that the moon loves the Earth
so much,
it can't help but travel back every time.
I think that I might be apologizing for purposefully
destroying myself, that this is the summer and I
am the sand; I keep trying to wash myself out of
my own shoes, granules of my apologies that you
shake our from bed sheets,
from the roots of your hair,
but they keep showing up. So eventually,
we learn to live with the grit.