I’m sorry, I’m broken.
That’s the disclaimer I carry
like a fragile-stickered box,
shipped express through years of fire.
I walk in with cracks showing,
the kind you try to hide with duct tape
and a joke timed just right.
But laughter’s just a band-aid
on a bone that healed crooked.
I’m not tragic—
I’m just bent.
Like a photograph left in the rain,
colors bleeding out of their borders,
faces warped until you can’t tell
who they were supposed to be.
People say resilience like it’s a compliment.
Like the glass glued back together
isn’t sharp at the seams.
Like the scars on my soul
don’t itch when the weather changes.
I’m a museum of accidents.
Every exhibit whispers:
“Don’t touch, don’t touch—
it’ll fall apart.”
And you touched me anyway.
You reached for me with warm hands
and I cut you open.
I watched you bleed confusion
while I hid behind silence.
You begged me to speak
and I gave you fragments,
jagged syllables that tore your palms
when you tried to hold them.
I’m sorry for the nights I broke promises,
the mornings I woke up with guilt
already choking me like smoke.
I’m sorry for every slammed door,
every message left unread,
every moment I made you doubt yourself
because I couldn’t carry the weight of being real.
I told you it wasn’t you—
and it wasn’t—
but I know it still felt like it was.
The truth is,
I’m held together by tape and apologies,
and sometimes the tape gives out.
Sometimes I do too.
I am sorry
for the splinters I left in your palms,
for the way my shaking hands
made yours tremble.
I am sorry
for making you the mirror
that had to show me my own cracks.
You didn’t ask to hold my ruin.
But I set it in your lap anyway.
I am sorry for the ways I leaned on you
and cracked you thinner than you were before.
Sorry for turning “I love you”
into another way of saying,
“Please don’t leave me.”
This is not an anthem.
It’s not even a confession.
It’s just a small, clumsy apology—
three words folded into a fist:
I am sorry.
I am sorry.
I am sorry.
