Category: Regret

After the final gavel fell I was bustled away.  The weather for the past several days had been cool as the heat of summer faded into the early scents of fall, but that day was hot and the air thick with humidity.  The sky wasn’t dark enough for a storm, but there were clouds to keep the sun from baking me as I was stepped outside.  There was a slow but forceful breeze when I exited the courthouse.  I barely paid any attention to the small retinue of reporters and cameras.  Instead I felt the heavy air push my shirt…

The folders on the table were in two piles.  One was larger and was only things related to my case.  The other was a single manila folder with a small packet inside, fastened together with a large butterfly paperclip.  A pen rested on top of it.  They were the divorce papers, or the first set, to be accurate.  Joanne – or her lawyer, but I think Joanne – had all the places I had to sign marked with little colored tabs.  I leaned over them for almost five minutes, thinking of how it had come to that point, and whether…

“Sure, sure, and it is my job to hold people accountable for their choices, but that makes you a hypocrite.  You think you ‘had’ to kill Mrs. Newman?  You’re saying everyone makes their own choices?  You got a lot of things wrong.  You should have thought it all through.”  He paused and leaned in on his elbows, crossing much of the table.  “But honest to God, Ed, all of that aside – you are a damned fool if you think you’ve been a good father to either of your kids.” I jumped across the table and punched him square in…

When I was eight my family went to the shore in Delaware sometime in August, just before school started.  My father begrudgingly took us and hardly smiled the whole trip, but that didn’t stop my mother from making sure we had a good time.  Dad was late to the baby-booming spirit of family recreation.  He was a manager at a meat-processing plant and just as visceral as his job.  He was no Rocky Balboa, though, get that Philadelphia meat-packing image out of your mind.  The waves were particularly rough and Luke, three years older than me and the youngest of…

I figured something out.  I think Joanne visited Ben while he was in rehab.  It would explain a lot of things, like why she wasn’t as bothered to see him or ask him questions as she should have been.  I’m almost certain of it, and it hurts.  It hurts that Ben would want to see his mother and not me, and it hurts that they kept it from me.  Still, no one has told me, but it struck me the other day when some prisoners were talking about their visitors, all of whom were family. Why?  Why would Ben do…

Song spent the morning telling me about the girlfriend he had before coming in.  She’s the cutest, most petite black girl he’d ever met, he said.  I ignored the fact that his statement was mildly racist.  It would be lost upon him anyway. Her name is Jasmine, and they met at a high school football game, watching a top local prospect.  Song was with some friends, and Jasmine managed to spill a drink on him in the bleachers.  Thinking about Song’s potential reactions to something like that brings a smile to my face every time I imagine them.  Song says…

Some children of alcoholics become alcoholics. Others, in fear of becoming like their parent(s), put down the drink forever, terrified of what it can do to them – “what it can make them do.” I’ve taken the middle road. My father wasn’t abusive, which is perhaps why I have no particular aversion to booze. He would yell if he was already in a bad mood, but he didn’t have any mass of hatred or anger to unleash when the alcohol took hold. However, there was one night when the police brought him home. He’d had too much and taken part…

My name is Edward B. Haynes, and regret often has nothing to do with whether or not someone is right or wrong.  Many people willingly do the wrong thing and don’t feel bad about it.  Sometimes someone will have not done the wrong thing, but felt bad about its outcome anyway.  Survivor’s guilt and all that, for example.  I’ve made mistakes, everyone has, but I don’t know if this was one of them considering the circumstances. I’m not sure why I’m writing this.  If nothing else, it will help pass the time.  I obviously have plenty of it. They’re not…

This really needs some work…. —————————————————————– It was one of the cooler July days, even with the sun out.  The comfortable breeze and the shadows cast by the stonework in the late afternoon sun gave me a reminiscent or even cathartic feeling, as if I had been missing those summer days for too many years and seasons gone by and needed to find something in me to bring them back.  The only thing I had in me were memories, no sort of creative inspiration.  Standing still in front of the church, it didn’t take me long to think that it…