The Right Thing

The coffee between us had cooled.

She was looking into it like it held an answer.

Then she said: You were right.

You were right when you told me.

I didn't remember saying it.

Not exactly. Not in words I could repeat back.

I said it angry. Said it sharp.

Said it the way you say things

when someone's wasting time

and you've run out of patience

and the words come out mean.

But she repeated it back to me—

not the anger, just the shape of it,

the skeleton of the thing—

and suddenly I knew.

I knew it was true then.

I know it's true now.

The worst part is the knowing.

The worst part is not being able

to take back the rightness,

to say I was just angry,

I was just frustrated,

I didn't mean the truth.

She looked up from the cup.

Her eyes said: This helped me.

Her eyes said: I'm grateful.

Her eyes said: What you said in anger

was the most honest thing anyone's told me.

I wanted to say: I didn't mean to be right.

I wanted to say: I was just trying to hurt you.

I wanted to say: Take it back, please, let me be wrong.

But anger doesn't get to be simple.

Anger doesn't get to be just anger

when it lands on the truth.

And now the truth is sitting here between us

in the cold coffee,

in her small nod,

in the thing I said that I can't unsay,

that I can't claim I didn't mean,

because I did mean it.

I mean it still.