Which time do I promise myself--- from tomorrow, I will be different! It will be harder to forgive now, It will be easier when I lose. I will judge everyone more faithfully. I will grieve less for others. I will follow the easy paths. I will get rid of the delusions: That if you have given, you will receive, if you are good, they will be good with you! That love is a gift and a mercy of God, if you love---then you are needed! I will uproot all the feelings, and I'll throw them in the trash. To love without love is an art. And to forget later---a pure luck! It is fashionable to take without giving. To drink thirstily, then to ruin. And neither good nor evil to forgive. How old-fashioned I am---look at me! That's why I promise again today! But the river flows to the sea. Bringing her back is not possible. And also, the sun does not shine at night!
# Regret I didn't know then that some words, once spoken, become permanent residents of the heart— that they build rooms in the chest and refuse to leave. I thought forgetting was simple, a matter of time and distance, the way salt dissolves in water. But regret doesn't dissolve. It crystallizes. It sharpens at the edges. It learns to cut. I carry it now like a stone in the pocket of my coat, a smooth, heavy thing worn down by my own fingers turning it over and over in the dark. If I could speak to that earlier self— the one who didn't know better, who thought careless words were kindness, who believed wounds could be wished away— I would tell her: *Watch your tongue.* *It is more dangerous than you think.* But she wouldn't listen. She never does. And so I carry both of us now: her lightness, my weight. Her laughter, my silence. The years stretch between us like a hand reaching back through fog, trying to catch something already gone.
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