Failed Elegy

Remember in the bar-blank night the time

I touched your breast accidentally

when hugging hello and would not

for the rest of the night stop apologizing

and then would not stop apologizing about

apologizing, worrying you about my worry

that my apologies sounded fake, after

three of the bar’s cheapest beers everything

but you began to seem that way: fake, an ersatz

translucence, the lip of a sweet so sharp

it tastes bitter, though this is not about bitterness

but accidents, this is not about accidents

but how stupid easy it is for a stupid story

to become the memory that comes to mind when

I need most to recall you to earth along with

your beauty, the sweet kind that defies any

of the earth’s explanations, when I need

to remind myself but moreso the earth

that such beauty exists, existed, and my mind

tricks itself, though maybe this is its way

of focusing on my embarrassment and not

the bloodflush of grief I feel bodily when

I think of you in that bar with the night

in your teeth, strange heart, wild-dancing,

a breathing compendium of every beauty

that every beautiful song says should never

have an end.