The Versions That Haunt Me
I have too many regrets
they bloom like tumors
in the soft tissue of memory,
each one pulsing with
what I should have said
before silence set in
like rigor mortis.
I swallowed whole versions of myself
the reckless, the brave,
the boy who ran
before the door slammed shut.
Now I speak in echoes
of things I almost did.
I wear lives
that were never mine
borrowed skin
stitched with trembling hands.
Time doesn’t pass.
It repeats.
A loop of almosts,
a static scream
beneath my breath.
I reach for moments
already burning.
Beg the past
to hold still
while I cut it open
and try to crawl inside.
But every thread frays.
Every version unravels.
Every choice I didn’t make
drags a knife
through the one that did.
And what’s left?
This composite ghost.
This broken archive.
This aching
palimpsest of a person
who once believed
he had time.
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