Mistakes

by James Miraflor

Mistakes, how they hate me,
how I hate them.

I don't learn from them, and they must have
hated me for always calling them back
to repeat themselves, like a stale song
played in a broken piano.

They cost me the things I love, and I cost them
their non-existence. Now, they have to exist,
only to feel the weight of my wish
that they never did.

And I cannot undo them enough. Some of them
may have gone, but the pain they etch
in the fabric of my past,
no sewing can mend.

So they always go back, to taunt me,
to mock me, and condemn me to
endless solitude.

And so I hate them,
then like a gift from a distant friend,
they give me back their hate.