---
title: When I'm sorry I wash dishes
genre: verse

id: when-im-sorry-i
toc: "When I'm sorry I wash dishes"

project:
    title: Autocento of the breakfast table
    class: autocento
...

| Your casserole dish takes the longest:
| it has some baked-in crust from when you
| cooked chicken last night.  Washing it
| allows me to think about this poem's title
| and the first few lines.  Now that I've
| written them down, I've [forgotten the rest][].

| While scraping at something with my finger-
| nail, I catch myself wondering again whether
| you'll thank me for washing your dishes.
| I realize that this would defeat the point
| of my gesture, that this has destroyed
| all good thoughts I've had about saying

| "I'm sorry."  This, [this is the reason][] why
| I am always apologizing: because I never
| mean it, because there is always, in some
| [attic][attic], a thought roaming that says, insists:

| "I've done nothing wrong, and I deserve
| all I can take, and more than that."

[this is the reason]: http://plagiarist.com/poetry/1703/
[forgotten the rest]: elegyforanalternateself.html
[attic]: real-writer.html