*"I'm sorry."*

I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.

Everywhere, everyway, everyone—always, always sorry for something. All the time apologizing to me for some bullshit, like there was ever a time or place where it would ever be appropriate for me to be mad at anyone, at any time.

“Everyone’s--sorry--,” I stammered, the thought bursting through my lips before I could stop it. I backed out of Auntie’s embrace a little, just enough so I could look her in the redness of her eyes.”Everyone…everyone apologizes to me all the time and I just—I don’t want--“ I stammered and struggled and wrestled with my thoughts to try and twist them into coherent words, “I just want people to stop saying sorry to me all the time.”

I looked at her again, in those eyes that her daughter must’ve stolen from her at some point in the womb. “I don’t want sorry,” I whispered, the words tasting too familiar in a bitter way I wasn’t ready to face yet, “I don’t want people to be sorry, I just—I want you and everyone else to be happy and I—“ My mouth gaped open, empty, because I couldn’t find the strength words to articulate the thought in my head, the crushing, honest idea of me that I was still trying my damndest to finally face down.

In the end I sagged a little, my shoulder slumping again as a hopeless chuckle slipped passed my lips. “The world’s…stronger than me,” I admitted in a small voice, a voice only for someone who smelled too much like my Ma, “and I can’t bend it the way I wanna….”

I fell quiet, thinking about the words Auntie had said: “I'm...not good at showing it but...I do love you." I shook my head sadly, the smile playing on my face just a little too sharp and sad for warmth; I guess it was in the blood. Auntie, Ma, and me, struggling with words and actions and feelings—probably feeling it all so hard, even if it had trouble climbing out of us in ways that the rest of the world understood.

It…was scary, looking at my Auntie’s bare words and the dare to believe the truth in them. I could’ve just left everything in the dust and let them forget about me instead of bearing myself to the burn of her searing hatred for my failure with Toto. Jiji had already taught me that love didn’t really have direction to it, didn’t she? But that didn’t make it any easier to hold onto, cuz a senseless thing is a thing you can’t keep tabs on or measure; there’s no method of determining when or how or where or why it might finally flutter out. If there was no reason to love someone—if there was no reason for a flame to burn in an empty stove—how do you make sure the fire doesn’t grow cold, an finally die?

“…you sure?” I asked suddenly, all of me closed up and subdued as I looked up at Auntie from the shadow of my lashes, “You…you ain’t sick of my ass,yet?”






@[Ktulu]
"talk"