She Regrets Nothing

by Andrea Dunlop

Laila found regret to be the most useless of emotions; it kept one tethered to the past when the future was the only possible direction. She tried to devote all of her energy to moving herself forward. Onward ever; backward never.

She had undergone that subtle but definitive transformation in which the idiosyncrasies of one’s lover go from endearing to grotesque:

The heart doesn’t only want what it wants, it wants to want, craves desire itself, a state that can only exist in the moments before it’s fulfilled.

I saw you standing by yourself at the edge of the room. Maybe you were searching for someone; I don’t know. But you were kind of smiling to yourself, and I thought, Look at her; she’s in awe. There’s this miraculous moment where someone’s childhood self kind of filters through the cracks.”

Laila couldn’t fathom how to be by herself here, how to be still. The chaos of the city pulsed just beyond the walls; how could she resist it?

Almost a year to the day since she’d arrived in New York. It felt like a century. It felt like a moment.

In her mind, Laila rose above where she sat and looked down on herself: beautiful, young, unencumbered. This girl has only the brightest of futures, and where her past would be lies nothing. She is unstoppable and untethered. She loves no one—or at least, no one still living. Everyone has forsaken her, and she’s forsaken them in return. She has defended her own life and slipped from the grasp of those who would do her harm. She’s done only what she needed to in order to survive. She is the master of her fate, and she regrets nothing.