Apologia in Free Verse (After Too Much Metre)

 

I meant to speak plainly. To let the thought go unbuttoned, 

leaned against a kitchen chair, talking about traffic 

or the way light hits the linoleum.

 

But then—I rhymed. 

By accident or reflex or loneliness.

 

It was you that made me do it— 

not out of guilt, but because the sentence curled 

toward music, and I didn’t stop it.

 

You rolled your eyes. I apologised. 

And still the phrases rang like pewter spoons.

 

There’s something in me that keeps folding 

speech into couplets, as if silence 

might forgive it easier when dressed in echo.

 

So no—I wasn’t trying to impress you. 

I was just afraid the truth, unmetred, 

might sound too sharp when said aloud.