Trouble Will Find Me

“in which the poet tries to apologize again” by Alex Dang!

I am sorry I tried calling you that one time when I was drunk off lonely and whiskey and Four Loko.

It’s just that your hands were so good at keeping me together. My body still sometimes collapses into the shape

of your mouth. I am such a soft, malleable thing, and it has taken me too long to realize that you are also this. More important,

that you are more than my memories. That you exist free and independent of my life. That my idea of you that crosses

my empty highway mind is not you. And with this, I am so sorry for all the nights I tried to split your heart open just so

I had a place to rest. I did not understand how you were no longer me anymore, how the you I had in me was a postcard

and not the city. Forgive the fury, the angry prayers tossed towards the dark of my 3AM ceiling that were meant for your neck.

You were asleep that night where we started to break, and my skin felt taut and sunburned, so red and wanting to scream, but Cassidy

told me that it makes sense why this was so frustrating. The rusting of four years should make me mad. It meant I cared. And I still do.

And I still get the urge to hollow my arms so you can fit better, you this new person who has grown and loved and spilled over into

a newer night. I forget so often that I can’t carry you like I once did, and that you don’t know how to hold me anymore.

Even now, I’m still apologizing.

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Alex Dang! called us from Portland, OR. More about Alex.

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