i'm sorry.

What's it like to cry yourself to sleep?
I wouldn't have known if not for you.

Laying on my back,
I reached my arm out to the right last night
where you usually sleep
but all I felt was the ghost
of a cold arm.
My hand clenched down on empty sheets
and you didn't rock me to sleep like you always did when I had a bad dream.

I could have hugged real tight
-to smush all your broken pieces back together,
to pull yourself together for you-
just once when you were there for real;
you were the once who needed to be rocked to sleep then.
But I stayed absolutely still then
and listened to your insomniatic husk tremble
with the weight of the world
in the dark.

And for that,
I am sorry.
I am so, so, so sorry.
I am so sorry that my insides won't stop clenching,
squeezing every last drop of hate and guilt and regret
out of my puckered face.