I’m sorryyy, I’m sORRy I’m SAW-ry I’m SORRY⎯with every inflection
possible he bruises his kneecaps on the metal roof of the car & somehow
the car doesn’t cave in, to a horse’s body,
& the body doesn’t give in to the horse even when Sarah Lynn’s does.
Somehow, we don’t give in to hatred but guilt when his voice is this hoarse
in apology, in begging, like prayer like Princess
Carolyn just might be his god, giving him one last one last chance to get your
shit together. You think that love is being
shitty together⎯we’re the same⎯
you know, the whole shtick, we were addicts, & the thing about addicts is enough
bullshit, you are killing me, over & over & over as a preamble to dying
yourself. I love you just enough to not hate you, though you hate yourself
too much to ever accept love. We’re all addicted to something,
even if that something is saving you so I don’t have to save myself.
(Okay, so I’m the Princess Carolyn. Or I used to be.)
Your fist in walls, your insistence on need, your stash in the ceiling, my favorite sweater
bloodied by your coke crushed nose. It stayed my favorite.
The people close to us are responsible for holding up the
mirror until they aren’t. Family is forever until it isn’t, or we wish.
We are fleeting, dying
to be remembered. The worst things you’ve done you don’t
remember & deserve to never forget.
Alright, I’m bitter, I’m broken, too. (Maybe I’m Diane, after all⎯
writing about you & trying to stop, but still writing about anything but myself⎯)
None of us wants to know we
are all the things wrong with ourselves.
Not the bottles of stars we swallow,
but a blood-sewn ugliness.
When my mom calls it’s to rewrite
that generational hurt, or to try.
Not to light matches into my gasoline
lined-throat.
The only thing in your blood is a murderous alcohol
content. You are not either of your parents, but neither
am I, & I need to stop trying to rewrite you.
This show doesn’t have a happy ending.
I’m sorry. Let’s rewind. I start the show over
when Bojack gets out of rehab. I stop thinking about my brother (alright, so I’m Hollyhock, you got me), or who he could have become,
when I watch.
I get fat & happy. He’s expecting a baby.
We quit doing the Bojack.
I call him, instead. I say: how was your day?
& he says: good! & I say, good.
Camille Ferguson is a queer poet from Ohio. Camille loves espresso, Modest Mouse, Bojack Horseman, and you. Her work is featured or forthcoming in Drunk Monkeys, Okay Donkey, Flypaper Lit, Zone 3 and Door Is A Jar, among others. You can follow her on Twitter @camferg1.