Spilled Coffee

The caustic, dark, feeling of regret is a heavy one.

It weighs down on you, rocklike, crushing your spine with a crack and your dignity with a flood of salty tears.

The mind goes into overdrive, spinning like a rusted, old machine- the gears getting caught on dusty remains and faded memories.

Colors once vivid fade to a dull gray, with only the occasional glimmer of silver in this darkened and lonely world.

Snippets of conversations flit through your mind like a torn newspaper, only able to sweep up the fragments after they've been burned by your anger and twisted and crumbled into ash by your sadness.

Your soul cries out in fear, in anger, in disappointment, pale, clammy hands reaching and grasping for something that's as existent as your happiness.

Regret is as bitter and black as coffee, leaving stains not only on your teeth but on your trust,

the fluttering, frail, and fragile thing.

It trembles like the translucent tissue paper that resides in your mothers closet, collecting dust, absorbing the sounds of a broken heart; and a broken family.

It is left to be ripped and torn by those who betray you

stained by the regrets of choices past, as ink stains paper in the splattering, swirling marks familiar to all of us.

This familiarity has taken a hold in your heart, until your heart is diseased and decaying, unable to love, unable to be loved.

Regret has rough calloused hands, leaving bruises on our delicate bodies, flowers that bloom on our garden of skin, growing black and blue. We press the bruises as we press flowers; to remind us of the mistakes we've made and the pain that comes with them.