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.
Through the Fog 