Love Letters and Apologies

The thing with always being sorry

In every tongue, my name sounds like an apology.

When you ask who i am,
how do i tell you i am nothing and everything all at once-
I am not a part of the brilliant pink sky hanging inches above your terrace;
you take a picture of it,
losing it among thousands of your sunrises and sunsets,
how would you even know if one of them yearned to be touched,
reaching out for your fingertips with the last wisps of light,
while you counted off your days in red ink and distaste.

I am not.
A fragment of the grass beneath your feet,
but if you ever looked closely enough, the cracks in your ceiling and the lipstick stain on the corner of your morning cup of coffee will start to resemble me in ways i have myself ceased to be alive.

I wish I had been born as a song,
wrapping my limbs around you,
seeping under your skin,
bleeding in your favourite colour-
Until i am the tune you can't get out of your head,
humming my name beneath your breath, even as you keep your hands warm in pockets of strangers you always share half a life with.

Black fingertips leave the smudges of a rainbow lost on windowpanes no one had the desire to break.
You say i am the summer rain and never let me in.
I stay in the letters that got lost in kitchen fires and languages that let their blood run out on forgotten battlefields.
Names tend to bury themselves beneath the earth, never to be found.
My name still lingers beneath your concrete walls-
It hangs on by a single obstinate thread on your favorite bedsheet;
Floats in the still water of the vase of ancient flowers you never cared enough to even throw away-
Lying on the dust
And breathes just enough to be more dead than alive.

I have a name that belongs to me-
and all the people who forgot what train they were waiting for and ended up building a home on rail tracks.

I wonder if my mother had painted me red and my father had loved the color blue- whether my stubborn name would have stopped ringing and falling down on all fours- waiting to be heard.
Waiting to be embraced by arms that would never let it slip through the cracks in the marble floor.

Whether i would have waited anyway.

I wonder if I'll still be sad. But maybe I would have stopped being sorry.