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, a thought roaming that says, insists:
“I’ve done nothing wrong, and I deserve
all I can take, and more than that.”