We Are Women and We're Sorry

We want to know if we said the right thing, the wrong thing. We are sorry but we have feelings, we don't want to be crazy but, this might be wrong but, we might be delusional, and if we are, we're sorry. We're sorry we made you feel that way. We're sorry we made anything at all.
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We are women and we would like to apologize.

We are sorry for how tall our hair, how big our bodies. We are sorry the grass is so muddy today and we're sorry you stepped on our foot. We are sorry to eat so much, sorry we're just not that hungry, sorry we've been asked to stand in front of you and say some words, and that they're so long, or so short. We are sorry for our question, so stupid, sorry for the fat on our stomachs, we're sorry we don't have children yet, for our crying babies in the backs of restaurants, we are sorry for having an opinion and we pepper every few sentences with I don't know.

We want to know if we said the right thing, the wrong thing. We are sorry but we have feelings, we don't want to be crazy but, this might be wrong but, we might be delusional, and if we are, we're sorry. We're sorry we made you feel that way. We're sorry we made anything at all.

Our mothers are sorry they didn't sort this whole thing out for us 50 years ago. It wasn't for lack of trying. Our mothers are sorry because they don't want to pry, like their mothers used to, but they've noticed we've been sharing a lot of articles on Facebook lately about campus rape, and is that maybe something we want to talk about, at dinner sometime? Share stories? We're sorry we never respond, that we haven't yet thought about how old we wanted to be before hearing our mothers' rape stories, although of course some of us never had a choice about that.

We're sorry if we forgot to mention this earlier, but we might not be able to have kids at all, the doctors still aren't sure, and we're just telling you now, so you can leave if you want to.

On Friday night we said, I'm sorry, excuse me? to the well-dressed young stranger in the bar who said hello, and then told us he'd like to stick the thin straw of his drink and, later, his dick between the gap in our front teeth.

We're sorry this is so long and really not very funny anymore, we're sorry for all the apologies forgotten even as we use the first-person plural. We're sorry to be speaking for us. We're sorry we can't be everything to everyone.

There are a few things we've never apologized for, but we'd like to. Specifically, we're sorry for all the times we let them say to you man up, and don't be a pussy, dude, and for all the times we said it ourselves to you, before that Tuesday when you finally ended your life.

We're sorry but we have to go to the bathroom again, and we're sorry that it maybe just comes back to our fathers, how they loved or didn't love us. Most nights, we're sorry to the world, the way we haven't yet been able to save it, and we're sorry to all the girls, to all the children really, and we're sorry we can't stop saying sorry.

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