Regret tastes like a rusted penny and the sharp tang of too much salt.

It’s that feeling after you say words that you can’t take back. The words pour from your lips like a glass full of water that’s been knocked over. The glass shatters into a million pieces. You can’t fix that, instead all you do is admire how the shards looks like the stars in the black as pitch sky. The water pours over the linoleum, making it slick and slippery. Dangerous.

You try to pick up the pieces, making tiny little cuts on your fingers, little rivers of red. Sharp, piercing pain that fades over times.

You wish you could take the words back, but you can’t. You grip the shards tighter and tighter, your skin falling apart as you fall apart too. As they walk away.

You want nothing more than to apologize. To scream I am sorry into the dark abyss of regret. But the words get stuck in your throat. Like you are choking and you need someone to pound on your chest to dislodge.

And as they get further and further away, as their silhouette becomes nothing more than a tiny speck in the distance. You regret.

Oh, do you regret.

You wish you could press rewind. Wish you could rewind and start all over. Start with I’m sorry instead of I blame you. Start with I love you instead of I wish I didn’t. Start with I need you instead of I hate you. But it’s already too late.

You crash to the ground, knees bruising, hands flat on the ground, blood pours from your hands like the water on the glass.

The curtain closes.

-K