A Roomful of Sorry

Everybody just wants me to sit here

In a roomful of sorry

Listening to condolences

Carefully worded wisdom

Explanations of how I should go about

Living the rest of my life

Everybody has an opinion

And a tissue

To wrap it up in

And my husband's gone

He's gone

And I'm mad at him

For eating wrong

And not exercising

And not going to the doctor

Every year like he should have

But more than that

I'm mad

That he left me

In a roomful of people

Who pick at me

Like I'm a bag of snacks

Who dip their sympathies into me

To see how much I can soak up

Who assess whether or not

I am fully grieving

And fully recovering

At the very same time

They check my wounds

They check my tears

They check my clocks

To see if they've logged enough time

At the House of Misfortune

And the thing about these people

The key thing

That I see

That they don't

Is that whenever they feel like it

They can leave the roomful of sorry

They can pack up

And take off

And go back to lives

That aren't filled with heart attacks

And funerals

And cold leftover casseroles

And silence

And I'm still here

And I have to stay here

I have to figure out how to get up everyday

And open windows in such a way

That light pours in

Enough light to flood the sorry

Out of this room

Out of this house

Out of everything

I have to remain here in this room

Long after everybody stops being sorry

I have to walk through here

And hear detached apologies

And old stories

And sad little pieces of advice

That go nowhere

But down the drain

That's opened in my chest

This is the room where we used to watch tv on the couch together

Where our daughter took her first steps

Where our son first played the guitar for us

Where we were happy

Where we were so happy

And now it's something else

And though I know I'll never get my husband back

I wonder...

I wonder about the room

And the house

And the memories of the house

And the way things were

I wonder if I'll ever be getting

Anything
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