Regret

Sometimes, it’s pride.

You shake your head back and forth, refuse to step down off of the dais that your red velvet crown resides on, remain a foot above the others and all that can touch them cannot touch you.

Sometimes, it’s stubbornness.

You look down on everyone else as you stick to your guns, fighting a war that may only exist in your head, a war that wreaks havoc on your mind and conscious, but you fight on anyways because you don’t know how to say stop, please. I’m through.

Sometimes, you’re afraid.

It’s hazy and foggy, like on a dewy morning when the heat of your breath won’t clear from the windshield, and you can’t bring yourself to put the car in drive and just go, to trust where it’ll take you, to trust that you’ll make it there okay and not worse for wear.

And when it’s all said and done, the bitter taste of all the things you didn’t do, whether by pride or stubbornness or fear, a rancid burning in your throat that sends tears to your eyes and spines to your innermost organs, that feeling is still around, haunting your thoughts and your actions, forever whispering in the dark recesses of your mind, what if?