I’m sorry to that sweet girl
who tore off that dress,
the one who laughed too loud
for the small corners of my memory.
I don’t remember her eyes,
only the smell of bourbon on my hands
and the way the bar smelled when she left.
She said it was magic—
that night, that touch,
that fleeting delirium
that I left floating
like smoke over the neon.
I’m sorry to the nurses,
the servers,
the women who thought I was more than a passing cup,
more than the whiskey I carried
from table to table,
from bed to bed,
always chasing something
I couldn’t pour out of myself.
I’m a man with empty hands
and a crowded mouth,
spilling names I shouldn’t,
forgetting ones I should remember.
They tell me I am fire in their veins,
I tell myself I am just thirst
that never ends.
I’m sorry to the girl with the dress
torn in the laughter we never kept,
to the smiles I drank into oblivion,
to the moments I was told were golden
but my brain buried like sediment
in the bottom of a bottle.
I remember now in fragments:
the brush of her skin,
the tilt of her neck,
the weight of a world I refused
to carry sober.
I’m sorry.
I wish I had learned to fill my own cup first,
before spilling into theirs.