Still there at night

Marcus's notebook

was on the desk,

the corner folded like a crook

in his life, grotesque

in its innocence.

And I said it

loud enough that silence

couldn't forbid it,

loud enough that he heard,

and his face did something

I've never since spurred

away from. Something

in how his jaw

tightened, how his eyes

looked away—

the awful reprise

of cruelty when you're thirteen,

thinking it's power,

thinking it makes you mean

enough to tower

over someone else.

It doesn't. It just

makes you know yourself

as the one who thrust

pain into someone

who didn't deserve it.

And years later, the sum

of that moment still serves it

up at 3 AM,

fully formed, visceral,

like I can see them

flinch, and the mirror

shows me exactly

what I was, what I am,

what I'll carry exactly:

the face of someone I've damned

with my own carelessness.

I didn't apologize then.

I won't now. The duress

of carrying this pain

is what I deserve.