I’m sorry to that sweet girl
whose dress I left in pieces
and whose laughter I stole without knowing.
I don’t remember her hands
on my chest,
the way she said my name
like it could open doors
I had long since locked.
Night after night
I chased their skin,
their breath,
their fire—
but the fire I carried
was never mine.
I filled my cup with women
and with whiskey,
and poured it down my own throat
faster than the world could notice.
The bartenders knew me by my trembling hands,
the servers by the sighs I left
on empty tables,
the nurses by the stories I told
and forgot the next morning.
They told me I was magic,
that I burned brightly,
but all I remember is smoke
and the hollow echo of their eyes
when I vanished into myself.
I’m sorry to the girl with the torn dress
who said it was love—
that night, that room,
that body that I forgot
before sunrise.
I’m sorry to the hands I never held,
the lips I never kissed with clarity,
the souls I treated like shadows
in the corner of my own hunger.
I am a man who thought desire could fill him,
who thought fire could be stolen
and still keep him warm.
I am a man with empty bottles
and empty beds,
with empty memory
and too-full regret.
I remember fragments now:
a laugh, a dress,
the faint weight of a hand
against mine,
and I ache for the magic
that I drank into oblivion.
I wish I had learned
to pour into myself first,
to remember what was real,
to honor what burned,
before letting it vanish
in the haze of another night.