When we meet for dinner you promise to drop coins into the hollows
of my knees and turn me into a wishing well, sneak your way over
to my mouth when the waiter isn’t looking.
I imagine waking up in bed in a strange apartment with a red-haired man
next to me, at first mistaking the strands for blood
if it were an extra-rough night, and over garlic bread and dipping oil
you tell me about your brother, in jail for a minimum sentence
of five years, and how you wrote a letter to him every day,
still do, asking for his forgiveness, because you were the older one
and should have raised him better.
But here’s what I understand, finally: that love is a tourniquet,
a bandage pulled on tight to staunch the bleeding of a broken heart,
and there’s only so much blame we can carry heavy on our backs
like crosses, all the brothers or sisters or cousins
we could have saved but didn’t, all the things we meant to say
but opened our mouths too late.