say when

If you're hovering suspended
in ether awaiting
an apology from me, I am happy
to oblige. You've seen
I apologize readily,
I even lay out the wrongdoing
and charge it quite indefensibly,
or at any event, undefended
against myself. In this case,
though, you'd have to tell me
what I'd have done wrong. Or
sit on a shelf.

The elves of apology wend
and work their mighty ways
by means of this: apology is

an admission of culpability for wrongdoing.

It goes awry, and often amiss if
it's only sorrow - "sorry!" - a word,
a report of how one's emotions
feel now. When the other feels
bad. That doesn't say much
if anything grasped of the
actual ow. Of what's actually
wrong, been done wrong.

It is often enough. We take it
as true coin, anyhow. And so
have always I. In absence of real
apology - wrong done, wrong known,
wrong owned - I accept a sorry
feelings report each time. Why,
I'd clearly be wrong to refuse,
to declined such apology light.
If I squoze shut eyes, or averted
them, when I know this is how?
It is known. People universally do
give and take such sorry things,
to lesson the grief
that resentment brings,
to bring forgiveness home
where it stings and belongs,
to make grievance shrug
a begrudging bow, leaving us each
whole again, like

a painstaking, patched up garden gnome.

But they agonize "Why!" the sorriest one
won't learn. Why do they keep doing
the same old wrong? That was never named,
understood or weighed? Why apologize

only to let let your same wrong turn
go on? Like a barnhouse ballroom
dance, swing your partner again,
and again! Less sorry each time,
more irked when the wrong is called.
The feeling is agreed allowed
to turn bad, without anything
more than a hint, of why or how.
Because by now, the established hint,
the warning sign of set face and
flashing eyes between us,
is established case law. Unshakeable
precedent. Neither one could say
or detail just
why at all.

Why is not the point. And neither one
can quite
point

just out

in words

just what

was the fatal fall and flaw
all about, so out of joint? What was
- demonstrably, chargeably foul
in the first foul call?
Just let it pour on, I guess.
If your cup runneth over enough,

say when.

I have here a towel
to soak up the rest,
snot, tears, coffee
wine and all.