Forgiveness was sitting in your kitchen when you got home, and now rests elbows on the table to watch you reach for a knife. You scrape the papery skin from a ginger root and slice it into thin coins. You think too hard about which mugs to pull from your cupboard: you might reveal too much; should you offer the one with the uncomfortable handle? Water boils. You divide the ginger evenly into both cups and pour. Spoonful of honey. You stir slowly, eyes down as though you might be able to forget. You stir too long. Forgiveness coughs politely, so you turn, place both mugs on the table, sit. Forgiveness leans forward. You lean back. You have forgotten what it is like to live with someone who eats all your cut watermelon, picks clean the skeletal vine of red grapes, shakes water spots onto your bathroom mirror without wiping them away. What thresholds of welcome have you crossed and recrossed? Most mornings, you listen for the body to move through your house and out the door before leaving your bedroom. Most nights, you ghost around each other without speaking. But now, as the rain drizzles into gloaming, you settle into your chairs, inevitable, a cupful of hesitation finally beginning to loosen your tongues.
Copyright © 2025 by Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on January 23, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets.
“I am ever a student of forgiveness—how it is experienced, how it is wielded, and how it actually appears in a biblical sense. It is not, as I was taught, closure, but rather an opening—the beginning of complex, difficult work. It often starts as a conversation, either shared or alone with one’s past selves. Forgiveness seems to be both a grace and a mercy, encompassing the best and worst of which humans are capable, sometimes brutal, sometimes kind. Kindness doesn’t always look like kindness. Power doesn’t always look like power. Forgiveness doesn’t always look like forgiveness.”
—Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello