---
I write my apology on a dried piece of wood bark.
Three thousand years ago, this land used to be a forest
I wash it around my mouth like spring water, letting my tongue familiarise itself with the sound; three thousand,
Th-re-e thou-s-and
I begin the apology with an expression of gratitude,
An affirmation that right now is, in fact, the best time for me to be alive
Strange beholder of a body given right-less tasks, that takes no decisions for others
And chooses its responsibilities without washing them down, indiscriminately,
As if they were pearls and orange rims in a forgiving-less ocean
Something I realise only the breathing can claim as a privilege.
I emptied countless packs of molten sugars as a child
So pomegranates blossoming in November thank me personally
They taunt me to pick their unripe fruits by whispering that change is constant and indiscriminate
They hiss that life is disruption and endings are only beginnings and not actually endings;
In due course daring me to soothe myself with a cup of coffee grown in an earth I have never smelled.
I swallow my prose and scratch the crude form of a human heart into the birch with blood;
It is my gift to this letter to replace the jewels clawed with tweezers out of mountains
And it is a recognition of the fountains of lore I have found hidden and desecrated.
I offer penance for imagining more worlds that have wars to bring home virtues
Who crush cultures with the ease of swiping saw from a woodworking table
The growing weeds dripped in stardust usher me to reassurance in spite of my guilt
They speak a language that I cannot understand but they bring me spiked fruit punch as I write, so I am grateful nonetheless.
The weeds cry when I do, and it kills me to see them weep for my cessation alone;
I offer penance for imagining more worlds that have wars to bring home virtues
Who crush cultures with the ease of swiping saw from a woodworking table
The growing weeds dripped in stardust usher me to reassurance in spite of my guilt
They speak a language that I cannot understand but they bring me spiked fruit punch as I write, so I am grateful nonetheless.
The weeds cry when I do, and it kills me to see them weep for my cessation alone;
At night, abandoned deities of summer make my skin glitter at their other-worldly touch, and I find myself longing for skies empty of light pollution,
Which dims all of the chatter of my comets constellating and sends the word ending at me, again, like an echo.
As self-discipline I propose a diet of cosmic dandelions that turn into emptiness before they ever reach my stomach;
Three pebbles of burgundy fruit patiently wait inside an envelope, and only then do I inscribe "I'm sorry" and "Good riddance to a universe full of highways that could have been forests instead",
But there are too many words and I cannot seem to get them to fit on the skin of the three seeds.
I give the inked wood to the King of pomegranates.
His teeth sink into my chest, thoughts and a searing pain ruefully dissipate into blazing lights and then nothing;
And before that the inevitability of it all smells like an oil spill.
---