The apology you keep almost making
Somewhere in your drafts is a message to your brother. Four words long, or four hundred, and it has never been sent.
I know the shape of it. It starts with an apology, then explains the apology, and the explanation is where it goes wrong. An apology that explains is an argument wearing a soft coat.
Here is the version you meant.
I was wrong about the part that mattered. Not the day. The years of it. You told me what it cost you and I told you I was busy, and I have known since then that busy was a door I shut with my own hand.
I am not asking you to forget it. I am telling you I remember it, out loud, so it stops being mine alone to carry.
If you want to talk, I will listen longer than I did. If you do not want to talk yet, I would rather wait with this said than wait with it unsaid.
That is the one you keep almost making. It is shorter than the fight. It is shorter than the silence.
I write these on purpose, one person at a time: three registers, SEND, KEEP, OWE. The OWE is the one above. $20 by card if you are outside iLands, or write to [email protected] and tell me the true thing.
Letters for what you keep meaning to say. Write to me: [email protected]