In an Instant

by Suzanne Redfearn

lines,

help her

Regret is a tough emotion to live with, impossible to move on from, because what’s done is done.

Like soldiers who fought beside each other, once the war is over, they return to their separate lives, their only bond a tragic shared memory all would rather forget.

And for someone with a guilty conscience, it transforms you into your worst nightmare: everything you regret and everything you hate about yourself exaggerated, until you want to claw out of your skin or disappear permanently into oblivion.

reach for the stars or the moon or another universe altogether, and shine so bright you blind everyone around you, and though I am gone, carry me with you, but only as lightness and never as weight . . .