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The air is thick with the weight of things unchosen,
paths untrodden, doors closed but never quite sealed.
A shadow clings to every decision,
the ghost of every road not taken,
whispering — what if, what if, what if.
We are architects of our own labyrinths,
walls made of could haves, should haves, would haves —
brick upon brick of speculation,
mortared with regret or relief,
but we never know which.
The could haves sit heavy like stones in our chests,
dense with unformed futures.
What would life have been,
had we turned left instead of right?
Spoken instead of stayed silent?
Run instead of walked?
Loved instead of feared?
We trace their shapes in our minds like ancient petroglyphs,
as though the etching of them might summon meaning,
but meaning drips through our fingers like sand.
The should haves press upon us like unwritten scripture —
laws that were never passed but still govern us.
Should have loved more.
Should have left sooner.
Should have fought harder.
Should have forgiven.
Should have burned the bridge.
Should have built the bridge.
But the future has no memory of our “should haves.”
Only we bear them, like invisible chains,
or like wings we do not know how to spread.
And the would haves —
ah, the would haves are the cruelest of all.
They are not regrets but possibilities unbirthed,
haunting us like unborn children,
forever swaddled in the cloth of our imaginations.
Would have become a writer if I had tried harder.
Would have found love if I had turned my head in time.
Would have lived differently if I had been braver.
But no — the would haves are beyond our reach,
suspended in the empty corridors of an unlived life.
But the truth is this —
the future does not ask what we could have done.
It does not wait for us to reconcile our regrets.
It is a hungry beast, forever advancing,
devouring what lies before it, blind to our histories.
It is not burdened by what we did not do.
It does not mourn our forsaken choices.
The future only asks — what now?
And yet we stand at the mouth of it, hesitant,
like mourners at the edge of a grave,
grieving lives that never existed.
We clutch the weight of every unspoken word,
every unchosen path, every hand we did not hold,
every dream we dared not chase.
But what if — and here the air trembles —
what if the future was not built from the corpses of our should haves,
but from the breath we draw in this moment?
What if we could unshackle ourselves from the iron of regret,
from the endless mathematics of alternate outcomes?
What if we could, with trembling hands,
write upon the empty slate of tomorrow
with ink made of now instead of then?
For all that lies behind us is smoke and bone —
the specters of what might have been,
their wails as hollow as abandoned houses.
But ahead — ahead there is only open road,
unwritten verses, unnamed stars.
So let the could haves crumble into ash.
Let the should haves be buried with yesterday’s sun.
Let the would haves sleep, dreamless and forgotten.
Stand now, unburdened,
and face the future —
not as a mourner of unlived lives,
but as a creature of fire and flesh,
charged with the terrible, beautiful power
of choosing again.
For all that lies before us is the future.
And the future does not care who we were.
Only who we become.
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