Remorse

art by James Jean

Remorse is the inspector who comes to call when you're snorting a line. In your rush to flush the drugs back into the sewage of your memory, you trip and stub your toe against emotion.

Remorse is the pale gloom of age and waste, descending upon a life which you realise you've been living for nothing. Soiled by easy sex and stained by watered drink, you've danced your youth away into the seductive maw of night.

Remorse is the boy whom you turned away all those years ago, now mature and mocking; once sticky-sweet and sentimental, then platitudinous and pleading, he offered you religion - you did not convert.

Remorse is the rack upon which one's spent soul is stretched, remorse is the unforgiving whip which flagellates the self; remorse is the punishment for living lost, and lost lives, lost living.

[fin]

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vignette in six sentences