Regret is My Constant Companion

Regret walks beside me

like a shadow that never learned

how to leave when the sun comes up.

It knows my footsteps,

matches my breathing,

whispers the names of moments

I wish I could touch again

with gentler hands.

I carry whole conversations

that never happened,

apologies folded small

inside my chest,

waiting for a door

that doesn’t exist anymore.

Sometimes regret is loud—

a storm of what if

crashing against the ribs

until sleep feels impossible.

Sometimes it is quiet,

just a chair pulled out

at the table of memory,

sitting across from me

without speaking,

and somehow saying everything.

I used to think regret

was punishment—

proof that I had ruined

the only life I was given.

But maybe regret is only love

with nowhere left to go.

Maybe it stays

because something in me

still cares enough

to wish I had chosen

more gently.

And if that’s true,

then regret is not my enemy.

It is the part of my heart

that refuses to become careless.

The part that still believes

even broken people

can learn how to hold the world

without hurting it.

And maybe one day

regret will loosen its grip,

not because the past changed,

but because I finally did—

soft enough

to forgive the person

who didn’t know

how to be me yet.