My heart fell back against my spine, its blood running with the wolves of my regret.

It started to rain. I walked up Hawthorne with no jacket. It was getting windy and frozen out there. I looked up. The clouds were moving in. I watched the sky bleed its grey blood. The clouds were grinning. They had no tolerance for life. They simply bled where they told themselves to. I reached up and felt my hair and my face, the lines about the sockets. My bones were back there, blocks away in her store and I was powerless, stuck in Portland with no coat, no money, no love. A horn honked and I jumped in.

Everything I didn't say,

When I could have said them?

The words that echo,

In the unconscious

Cave of my mind,

I call those dreams.

A simple word

Holds such weight

Binding us in chains

Second chances

Rarely come to fix

But when they do

Grab hold

Don't let go

Finding answers

To what if

Not saying hello to that person seeking attention, then I hear they've committed suicide.

All those days my dog wanted to play and cuddle and I acted as if I hadn't time for him and now he's gone.

The things I needed to say but never got the chance to because I was always too stubborn to swallow my pride and just do it.

Not being loyal and losing someone dear to me because of it.

Not spending time with my dad when I was younger, he missed my entire childhood....

All of these things I cannot change, I cannot undo or redo, I cannot fix. But they all have made me into the person I am, the pain of life shapes us in unbelievably harsh ways to see if we will give up or thrive as warriors.