Regret

There she sits, her pale olive skin hanging loosely from her meager frame like the tattered tapestry.  Given sunlight, it would hold a golden aura, but now only slightly shimmers by the dim light coming from the hallway sconces.  Tiny shadows perform a minuet across her brow, bending and bowing with each quiver of the filaments, jumping across the valleys creased deep by sorrow and regret.

The valleys deepen as she frowns, angered slightly that her glasses have slipped from their perch high on the bridge of her nose.  She replaces them with the utmost of care, making sure not to touch a lens.  Lacking any tissues nearby, she dare not smudge them.  Adjusting the newspaper clutched between her fingers, gnarled and knotted by arthritis, she leans back in her chair.

As she continues her article, a single gray hair flutters down in front of her eye.  She sighs, and the hair soon follows her breath into the darkness beyond the hall.  The giggles and beckons of young children, one to another, echo from beyond her sight.  She frowns at the darkness, and peace and quiet return.  Quaking with age, she raises one of her gnarled digits to her mouth, and wets the tip of her index finger on her tongue.  Turning the page, her eyes begin to glow.

She smiles, overwhelmed at the familiar face she sees staring back at her.  Nearly fifty years have passed since the last time she was lost within them.  Again, she finds herself there, swimming in deep pools of azure, lost to the world.  If only she could stay there, if only she had.  Her gaze strays slightly, lifting upwards to one simple, yet grievous word.  As it sinks in, her eyes glaze over, and what once were filled with a cheerful glow, now swell with somber tears.

---

Only one regret has had the lasting power to haunt her every waking hour, of every single day.  Leaving her to believe that, in love, one must exhaust all efforts and sacrifice every fiber of your being. Only then, in failure or success, can you truly be satisfied with the results.