Know This
All day long I say nothing but I am sorry.
The words tumble in breaths and yawns,
wait for acceptance at the breakfast table,
over black coffee and blue bowls of oatmeal.
In the garden, I whisper it to sleeping
purple foxglove, beg forgiveness
over bending sunflower heads.
I am sorrowful after lunch, again
while playing a Chopin Prelude, still,
at night while rereading Middlemarch.
I am sorry, I have said to the air around your empty
chair at breakfast, your muddied gardening shoes,
your echos caught in corners. I have professed
misgivings to food, to flowers, to rising piano chords,
to George Eliot (who never apoligized).
This is the way of remorse. Offered
to an invisible audience, carried out in solitude.
published in Parentheses Journal