typing double r’s

is a mistake my computer is attached to
like loving the wrong person
or eating after 8

it can’t resist
giving me a string of them
each time – rrrrrrr — like a cat

that loves to be petted but
can only stand it for so
long before it bites

i tell myself people can only
stand it for so long and so
it’s really my own fault

how many cultures
have a saying for don’t
do this dumb thing twice

“once burned twice shy”
“there is no education
in the second kick

of a mule” and of course
“fool me once” and yet
my hand my hand even

through the broken glass
of this window that has shut
between us

how it reaches

Doritt Carroll is a native of Washington, DC.  She received her undergraduate and law degrees from Georgetown University. Doritt is the winner of the 2023 Stephen Meats Poetry Prize. She is also the winner of Harbor Review’s 2020 Laura Lee Washburn chapbook prize for her chapbook A Meditation on Purgatory. Her poems have appeared in Main Street Rag, RHINO, and SWWIM, among others. Her collection GLTTL STP was published by Brickhouse Books in 2013. Her chapbook Sorry You Are Not An Instant Winner was published in 2017 by Kattywompus.  She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.  

Image: Hadi, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons