Sorry
I say it to the door I walk into.
I say it to the chair.
This morning a man stepped on my foot
and I said it to him, sorry,
the way you’d say it to the air.
I grew up in a house
where a mood could fill the hall
the way gas fills a kitchen:
no color and no smell,
and nothing to measure it at all
Get The Quiet Thinker’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
but a child. I was the barometer.
My needle dropped before the rain.
A cupboard closing too softly,
and I’d go find something to explain.
(you hadn’t done anything)
(that was never the question)
Years on, the needle still twitches.
At the checkout the cashier sighs
at a scanner that won’t read the beans,
beep… beep… nnnh,
and my mouth is already open, sorry,
for a machine I’ve never touched,
for weather that isn’t mine.
This week I’m practicing
something smaller than courage.
I hear the sigh. I let it belong
to the scanner, to her feet, her long
Thursday. I say, Long day?
and mean it as a question,
not a confession.
May every child awake tonight
reading the hallway like a dial
be wrong, for once, for a while.
May the weather be nobody’s,
and pass over the house,
and let them sleep.
