An Apology Letter to Someone I Wronged #WriteAPageADay #440

The Ink Bleeds Backward: An Apology in Fractured Verse

I. The Ink Bleeds Backward

I dip my quill in ink the color of regret—
not black, not blue, but something bruised.
A shade that stains the air when two souls fracture.
I write to you on parchment peeled from my ribcage.

II. A Broken Syntax of Remorse

I, the architect of wounds, string words like garlands around my wrists.
Heavy. Dangling. Unadorned.
I speak in ellipses, in pauses pregnant with unsaid things,
in exclamation marks that curl into question marks.
Did I break you like a clock winding in reverse?
Tick-tock. Tick. Stop.

III. The Ghosts in My Vowels

Your name lives in my throat,
a ghost of vowels I dare not exhale.
Consonants barricade my lips,
trapping apologies that calcify like fossils.
If I could excavate them, polish them, would they gleam or crumble in your palms?

IV. Where I Went Wrong

I built a house of laughter,
then knocked down its walls with a careless whisper.
I planted a garden in your chest,
then salted the earth when the roses wilted.
I was the thunder before the storm,
the hand that reached out only after it was too late.

V. A Dictionary of Undoing

There is no word for unshattering.
No verb for returning breath to the air once stolen.
No noun for the space where trust used to live.
But I wish there were.
I would conjugate them into an apology
so vivid, so visceral, so vast,
it would stitch our shadows back together.

VI. The Silence Between Us

I hear it:
the hush, the hush, the hush
of things unsaid,
knitting themselves into absence.
Can silence be a bridge?
Or is it merely a chasm draped in echoes?

VII. A Ritual of Atonement

I gather my transgressions like fallen feathers,
one by one, placing them in the river of time.
I watch them float, some sinking, some drifting.
Will you collect them? Keep them? Burn them?
Or will you let the current carry them
to a place where they can dissolve
into something weightless, something forgiven?

VIII. If You Read This

Do not think me worthy of absolution.
Do not mistake this ink for justice.
Do not let these words be a cage.
Instead, let them be a door.
If you choose to open it,
I will not stand in the way.
If you choose to close it,
I will not knock.
I will simply step back
and watch the light spill from beneath.

IX. The Last Line

I sign this with a hand
that once held yours too tightly,
then let go too soon.
My name is not enough,
but it is all I have left to offer.

— (Me, folded into silence.)

#ApologyLetter #Poetry #ExperimentalWriting #Regret #Forgiveness #PoetryOfTheSoul #UnspokenWords #HealingThroughWords