Her life was spent apologizing for her husband,
who liked to flip off other drivers for being bad ones,
apologizing for her son with his Eddie Haskell sincerity,
her daughter–
who was as much of a dumbass
as her son was a smartass–
and the little ones she called her “frat twins,”
whose idea was giving back came in the form of backwash.
When she looked in the mirror every morning
and saw the frazzled woman—
stamped with bootprints and footprints
from being a bargain-bin doormat—
she realized she felt sorriest for herself;
she apologized to no one for being who she was,
for in putting her family first,
she had,
inevitably,
put herself last.