I Told Your Secret

Apologies bite my tongue
so swollen that they can't escape.
like four stomachs, my words come out in vomit
so repulsive even you didn't want to listen but
everyone else wanted to know who did it.

like alphabet soup i rearranged letters,
adding food dye to the ones that didn't belong--
only so they could stand out even more.

I'm sorry.

"oh, wait, what was that?
i can't seem to hear through styrofoam walls
that only emit static and no other sound."

straitjacket greens bind lips like boiling water shrinks veins,
parting my lips to rob me of my breath
suffocating black lungs that don't deserve to breathe.

I'm sorry.

someone dented the sidewalk and
unintentionally i tripped and spit words i didn't mean to say.

I'm sorry.

"oh, what? I'm *sorry* i didn't hear you
but everyone else did."

© 2009 05 14 Mindy Huang

*So, I've been writing a ton of slam poetry, so now my poems are mostly prose and not at all like the ones I used to write. This poem may be a tad confusing, but basically, in my Journalism class, our poetry workshop consisted of writing a secret down, putting in a hat and everyone was given someone else's, and we would have to write a poem confessing that secret.

What was mine? "I told your secret."

Uh...oh...