{"id":157,"date":"2026-04-07T22:12:37","date_gmt":"2026-04-07T22:12:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/21-2\/?page_id=157"},"modified":"2026-04-13T02:48:27","modified_gmt":"2026-04-13T02:48:27","slug":"regrets","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/21-2\/poetry\/regrets\/","title":{"rendered":"Regrets"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mark Katrinak<\/span><\/p>\n

The countless cigarettes and regulations,<\/span><\/p>\n

I smoked in heavy rain\u2014butt-end of jokes,<\/span><\/p>\n

expensive habits, coughing riddling me;<\/span><\/p>\n

the autumn leaves disseminating on the walk,<\/span><\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t turn a final time to take<\/span><\/p>\n

a look at you, that there was one more gift<\/span><\/p>\n

exuding from your irises I could<\/span><\/p>\n

have memorized; no patience, not one ounce<\/span><\/p>\n

to watch a maple leaf detach, descend<\/span><\/p>\n

in Technicolor to its end; to not have stared<\/span><\/p>\n

deeply into the homeless woman\u2019s eyes,<\/span><\/p>\n

hesitant of an answer there; we did<\/span><\/p>\n

not make love frequently which made love less,<\/span><\/p>\n

less than what two were capable of, time<\/span><\/p>\n

edging closer to what was meaningless;<\/span><\/p>\n

well-struck, a childhood\u2019s worth of sitting ducks,<\/span><\/p>\n

a kid not striking back; obsessive with<\/span><\/p>\n

your beauty\u2019s potpourri, I failed to amend<\/span><\/p>\n

your roots, if only water of a single tear;<\/span><\/p>\n

that day I hurried out of house my prayers took<\/span><\/p>\n

a turn for worse, worse than a nun imagines;<\/span><\/p>\n

my well of tears ran dry and yet the grief<\/span><\/p>\n

remained\u2014I\u2019d settled in a droughty place,<\/span><\/p>\n

roots cracking through the earth and burros down<\/span><\/p>\n

to straw and bone; for sake of nicotine,<\/span><\/p>\n

yellowing resting on my fingertips;<\/span><\/p>\n

beyond these facial lines those sadnesses<\/span><\/p>\n

left unmentioned, December\u2019s clinging leaves<\/span><\/p>\n

dismissing their inevitable, wind-blown<\/span><\/p>\n

expulsion from the oaks and sycamores.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mark Katrinak The countless cigarettes and regulations, I smoked in heavy rain\u2014butt-end of jokes, expensive habits, coughing riddling me; the autumn leaves disseminating on the walk, I didn\u2019t turn a final time to take a look at you, that there was one more gift exuding from your irises I could have memorized; no patience, not… <\/p>\n

Read more Regrets<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":90,"featured_media":0,"parent":21,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-157","page","type-page","status-publish","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/21-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/21-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/21-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/21-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/90"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/21-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=157"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/21-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/157\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":161,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/21-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/157\/revisions\/161"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/21-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/21"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/21-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}