a short letter to an old love

forgive me my viciousness
my name-calling, my absent-minded
mishaps, my cruelties and calamities,
and all the ways we fumbled while i fled.

forgive me my anger, my flight,
my bad timing, my ill-conceived attempts
at disappearing, my slipping into any available
porthole to get a little bit of air.

forgive me my haste, my impatience,
my mess, my chaotic heart.
forgive me my clumsiness while
you fell, unattended,
into the busy, dirty street.

i didn't know how to say it
at the time, and even now
any word between us is a monster
crawling out of a still febrile cave,
a great roiling of bat wings.

it's just that our hands
couldn't fit together.
that's all.