What I Can't Take Back

The streetlights kept moving

or I kept moving through them—

I couldn't tell which.

The window was down

and someone was driving,

not me,

and someone was laughing,

and I remember saying something

I shouldn't have,

something specific and mean,

something that landed

and stuck.

Years later,

someone will mention it

casually, like it was funny,

like it didn't matter,

and I'll feel it land again,

the same way,

the same damage,

and I'll want to say

I wasn't myself that night,

I wasn't thinking,

I was drunk,

but that's not true.

I was exactly myself.

Just less careful.

Just more honest

in the way drunk people are honest—

the kind of honest

that destroys things.

The streetlights kept passing.

I kept not remembering.

And now I remember

the wrong thing:

not the night itself,

but the moment years later

when someone said,

do you remember when you said—

and I had to choose

between admitting

I'd been there,

been awake,

been the kind of person

who would say that,

or pretending

it was someone else's story.

I chose the lie.

It doesn't matter.

They still know.

And now when I see them,

I see the thing I said

written on their face

like subtitles,

like a thing

that will never

not be there.