I'm sorry I'm not in First Love love with you -
I'm sorry I can never give you that.
I'm sorry I gave my First Love love to someone else…
Who didn't have my First first love either.
I'm sorry I can never love you the way I loved my First Love (stay with me).
Never cautious and doubting;
never giddy learning I could be Loved;
never wholly and fully open, in a language only he could understand;
never confident in the years - not now.
I'm sorry I never waited months to change "I like you" to "I love you,"
or years to change "I love you" to "I'm in love."
I'm sorry I can never love you the way I loved learning his softness or helping him feed it.
I'm sorry I learned him at the same time I was learning so many aspects of myself.
To him, I'm sorry that I know him.
I'm sorry at times that I ever Knew him the way I did.
I'm sorry I know how he needs a love like a wildfire...
He shattered me so quickly when we were through.
I'm sorry that he knows me.
That when he Noticed me over a beer the next year, he had to laugh and say,
"some things never change."
I'm sorry to him, that he has to know me.
I'm sorry he has to devote a place in his history
to the things that are true about me -
to the things that were true about Us.
~
I'm sorry I'm not in Forever Love love with you.
I'm sorry: I could love you until the end of days but
I'm sorry, I cannot love you the way I love my brother.
Never so uncertain from year to year
and yet so core; so kindred; so vital.
I'm sorry I could never love you careful,
wishing I had more sway over the way you read our father’s lips.
I'm sorry I could never absorb you into my sense of self
or mark our histories on my skin.
I'm sorry I could never love you the way I love my mom. My dad.
Never angry, secure, undaunting, guaranteed.
Never vile and never pitch perfect beautiful.
I'm sorry I’ll never fight with you until we both feel insane,
only to quietly come back to the same room after some time
and clear the air with a story
told slow and long.
I'm sorry I could never trust you so deeply,
and break down, time after time when I realize you’ve been there forever.
~
I'm sorry I could have never loved my First Love the way I love you.
Never hot and disbelieving and totally overwhelmed,
Never open in a way I didn't know before,
Never so near to the comfortable discomfort of home.
Never surprised.
I'm sorry I could have never been so beautifully grateful as I am with you, for the ways
your differences from me make me breathe more tight,
but more easily.
I'm sorry I never cared that much to know him the way I care to know you -
Invested in your secrets,
Yearning for your mysteries,
Wishing I could share every gleaming facet of you with the whole world.
I love you, and I'm sorry how you hold me,
And I love you, and I'm sorry how you soothe me,
And I love you, and I'm sorry how you want to know me too.
I'm sorry I kept thinking in the book you gave me -
The heart in your heart -
That the beautiful pieces of Forever laid down
And intoned,
"I've never loved before,
Or if I have it was nothing,
And I'll never love again
Or if I do it's make believe,
All for you, all for you!"
But, I'm sorry, I heard.
And I'm sorry, that’s not true for me.
I have loved
and loved and loved
and I hope I will love
again and again and in all different ways.
I hope I love you again and again
I hope I love you every day new
Every day different
Every day, a love song in a new key.
You deserve it and so do I.
You deserve me and so do I…
And you, and us.
I'm sorry, my love, I love you so well, and so wrong, and so stupid
with all the wrong words
and a fraction of the right reverence.
I'm sorry I apologize when really,
I love you,
I’m not sorry.
Written 5/1/23
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i enjoy rewatching kristen’s scene with buddy because like. imagine your locker just got tagged and ur trying to be diplomatic about it because you’re in a public hallway so you try to keep appearances right? you’re running for president! but the sticker was of ur rival’s party and not even for her campaign. anyway you ignore that because this pasty rotten proselytizer has just mentioned to you apparently absolving himself of whatever horror his spells have wrought in assigning agency to..god? by the raising of his hand in a twisted form of praise? and your brain is going a mile a minute trying to connect the hazy frayed edges of thought he’s leaking out (grades are of the material world)(i pray before during after football games we win)(helio doesn’t make mistakes, kristen)(helio’s holding onto us tight)(they’re all gonna go straight to hell) and you are looking into a mirror of your past and seeing the zeal simmering underneath his gall now. how dare he? really? (every cleric has to have some kinda deity, right?)(i don’t feel any control over life) and in your head you see yolanda, who severed ties to her divinity to teach with compassion and a fairness that must’ve been in itself holy, dead. (i don’t hold tight, ‘cause i’m in someone’s hand.) and you worry about bucky, about what he could become without you holding him tight (i’m happy to look after him.) and your muscles tense up as you smile politely, a smile that doesn’t quite reach your eyes stony, impassive, like the wall you’re building to keep this serpent from striking at those you love. (careful.) and you, ready to defend, say, i’ll fucking show you.
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