apologies

there’s a limit to how long

I can keep saying I’m sorry I’m sorry

until the words start to taste like sand

and I’m huddled under a bridge in

broad daylight.  I’m sorry but isn’t good

enough, it doesn’t make the magnets
in my belly start to pull themselves out.

The river is swimming next to me

and I’m thinking how the metals in water

are suffocating the fish, whole schools

of them, sputtering.  Gills clogged. 

Floating never felt this guilty.

  All I want

is for the metal in my bones to know

that your sentiment is real and the

sediment in the river will one day

collect itself before a dam or a boulder

and will grow so heavy.

When we weigh

ourselves we won’t be able to tell

what is us and what is all of the metal

we carry around because no one
is sorry enough, sorry down to the 

iron in the center of blood cells,

mercury in tuna steaks, lead in the

paint on kids plastic toys, fertilizers

in storm drains, the earring I once 

swallowed.

Sand is just a glass

bottle hit against a boulder a thousand

million times, what happens when we 

say I’m sorry I’m sorry over and over