apology

[Todd]

Hi jmnical,

Welcome to the pigpen!

You have some nice moments here. The confusion of dealing with feelings of love from someone who hurts you is a good topic. How we feel isn't always clean a tidy. As to suggestions I would focus on what you could cut and enhance the poem through the cutting.

Examples:

L2: Is the and say good morning really necessary?
L3: from the context recoil itself reads involuntarily so you may not need the word.
L4: you can this line the well written S2 suggests his emotional state so telling us actually pulls us out of the moment. Trust the image or the reaction rather than adding the word for the emotion. What did the eyes do to show the anger (harden into pale chips of ice...whatever you choose just let the image speak for itself or again let the reaction in S2 do the work).

You get the idea. I hope some of that will be helpful.

Best,

Todd

I’m reading a book as I eat breakfast
he walks by and reaches to stroke my hair and say good morning
and I recoil involuntarily—
his eyes can’t disguise his anger.

mom tells me ‘you’re too sensitive
and you know he can’t help it
and you should say sorry
because he’s not going to
and really you’re very lucky’

but for years the decibel of his rage
hit me like a hand;
the sting of his words reverberating longer
than the time he actually spanked me
so I don’t quite know what to apologize for

but I know how much he loves me
from the sleepless weeks he spent in a lumpy
armchair beside my hospital bed during the summer of 2006,
and since he still calls me ‘pumpkin,’ and
he chokes up when he tells me how proud he is