I Feel I Owe You All an Apology by Celisa Steele

says God after several years of silence. Not
in so many words, but the air at nine a.m. is cool
though it’s July, there’s not one but five (five!)
stippled fawns high-stepping across the lawn like kids
who struck dress-up gold in a back-room closet, and the coffee
this morning, it tastes better. Not stronger, just better.
And, honestly, God, you’re right. We didn’t sign up for this ache—

though, to be fair, we should have planned
for parents to die, even expected a friend or two. But
the lung cancer that took Jodi (who never even looked
at a cigarette) before forty-eight? And Garett’s accidental
overdose in the middle of a pandemic? And, God,
Mindy the rescue mutt dead a month after she’d found
her forever home? Uncalled for. Mean-spirited.

Yes, I think we’re due an apology and a redo. Just don’t
get any diluvian ideas. No wiping the world clean
for a reboot. Pay us back a little at a time. A forgotten
twenty in a jacket pocket. Some infrared images
of deep-field galaxies and dying stars. A sip
of whiskey from a friend’s hip flask. The way
words written down still create sound.

Celisa Steele‘s poetry has appeared in Prairie Schooner, Cave Wall,  Raleigh Review, Comstock Review, Tar River Poetry, Poetry South, San Pedro River Review, and others and has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. In 2011, Emrys Press published her chapbook, How  Language Is Lost. Celisa served as poet laureate of Carrboro, North Carolina, from 2013 to 2016.

16 March 2026