An unexpected memory is released in an unplanned smell and sound and reaches down my throat and retches the sludge up and out. Self loathing slithers around with fetid filthy fingers and re-opens the regret notebook I stopped writing in and had put away in a drawer at the back of my head.
Regrets…….regrets live on long after a death has slipped down in history and changed its shape. Death does not allow for repair or renewal.
Regret squats over what remains like a grubby troll alert for a flicker of joy so that it can shit some toxicity onto it. It wakes you up in the middle of the night with its noxious farts that cling. Regret bleeds in and out like breath on a humid day. Regret writes on Every.Single.Page.
Before the end it would be good to rescue just one moment of joy from the sludge and inhale it deeply alongside the toxicity, feel its gladness over the sadness, hear the quiet laughter that was. And then close the book.
