Apology to My Ex Husband by Ruth Bavetta

What should I call you? Lover, father,
breadwinner, handyman, controller,
suitor for the unsuitable?

I’m sorry for the intersection
of promises crossed and abandoned
at the lip of the fault line, for evenings

found wanting, for the blatant
and the subtle, but not for the life
I found between the pages of my days.

I’m sorry for always wearing red,
for misunderstanding the depth
of your longing for black and white.

I’m sorry you are gone and yet not sorry.
Were you happy before the end? I could not
hear you when you did not speak.



Ruth Bavetta’s poems have appeared in Rattle, Nimrod, North American Review, Slant, American Journal of Poetry, and many other journals and anthologies. She has been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. Her fifth book, What’s Left Over, won the Future Cycle Poetry Book Prize for 2022.