No point crying over spilt memories,
when the morning slinks in early and worn,
shivers itself under the covers beside you
dew damp and clinging.
Regrets evaporate eventually,
or so you tell yourself, tucking your face
into the hollow of morning’s shoulder,
scenting last year’s summer.
‘Imagine if-‘
Slide your hand across morning’s mouth,
so similar to your own it seems,
hush her into half-sleep.
We have other questions to ask
when the sun is finished stretching awake,
and none of them look back
on the moments set in stone.
‘But you want to? Don’t you?’
heavier now with pillow pull, sinking
stone dropped into still waters,
down, down we go.
The earlier moments seem blurry now,
edges smoothed so it all seems inevitable,
choices we tripped around first time,
face planting into our decisions.
Still… we got here in one piece,
or enough pieces to pull together a whole
with two halves and another third
steadily on its way.
‘All of it could have been so different,’
but nothing wistful in that thought
which slips away with the other dreams
at the call of morning breaking.
Today’s optional prompt for #NaPoWriMo, is to write a poem about The Road Not Taken, pulling inspiration from Robert Frost’s poem. I’m already very good at picking apart my past choices, and obsessing over how things could have turned out so differently if I’d made a slightly different decision. I decided I didn’t need to voice that again in a poem as it’s not the healthiest of habits, and I’m trying to be better about looking forward rather than back. It’s all experience in the end, and we can only learn from the past, we can’t change it.
