draw a card and set it down.

dear right hand, dear write hand, dear rite hand,

When I was younger, I filled a thousand pages with apologies. I am sorry, I would say, in every mutation of the sentiment. I am sorrow, I would say, because I could not take the words back off the page and shove them down my throat. The action which I was apologizing for only became real when I named it in the letter. Sometimes, I did not write it down. I wonder if that means I wasn't sorry. I wonder if that means I wasn't ready to name it so. 

I can't help but laugh when I think about how close sorry and sorrow are to one another.¹ Cousins at least. Maybe brothers. Maybe lovers. Either way you have to agree — close. You are sorry. You are hurting. You are full of sorrow. "Ow ow ow!" the heart calls, like a cartoon speech bubble pounding against your rib cage. It swells up so big, crowding out your lungs and stomach like you swallowed a big balloon. The apology wrings you out. It pops the bubble.

I am still trying to eat the words off the paper. I am still trying to write things down to make them true (or untrue). I still haven't been able to keep them down, but I am trying, trying, trying. There is another story here, one about tiring, but I will leave that for another day — when I am rested, when I am not trying quite so hard. 

I have been thinking about faith lately, in an overwhelming capacity. I am not sure I have faith, in anything, but I think the grooves in my knees would do well against the earth. And I think that my ears hear best when the sound is like a waterfall pouring down my sternum. What I lack in faith I make up for in devotion. That's why I'm still trying to eat the words off the paper, to get them down without gagging. I chew and chew until my jaw is aching, but the words never become any smaller. Or any less painful.

What is it about writing that makes things solid?

I write the question down to give it margins, a space to think it through. My hand keeps bumping up against the edges of the box, my fingers prying at the projection of ink. I think I can taste the answer, even if I cannot put it down my throat.  

1 The year is 2023. I’m editing and annotating my old letters in preparation for their rewelcoming to the world.

If I’d had footnotes before, I would have added that sorry and sorrow actually have no etymological connection. Sorrow derives from Old English sorg, and is related to the German Sorge and Dutch zorg. Sorry derives from the Old English sārig meaning pained or distressed, and is of West Germanic origin, from the base of the noun sore. Oxford Languages helpfully notes that “The shortening of the root vowel has given the word [sorry] an apparent connection with the unrelated sorrow.” It’s fascinating how language has evolved to give them greater closeness — how I’m sorry can be deployed in various circumstances. I did try, in this letter, to keep attention on that root meaning — my sorriness always had a physical presence.