<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div dir="auto" style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif;" class="">Antilamentation<br class=""><br class=""></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif;" class="">Regret nothing. Not the cruel novels you read<br class="">to the end just to find out who killed the cook, not<br class="">the insipid movies that made you cry in the dark,<br class="">in spite of your intelligence, your sophistication, not<br class="">the lover you left quivering in a hotel parking lot,<br class="">the one you beat to the punch line, the door or the one<br class="">who left you in your red dress and shoes, the ones<br class="">that crimped your toes, don’t regret those.<br class="">Not the nights you called god names and cursed<br class="">your mother, sunk like a dog in the living room couch,<br class="">chewing your nails and crushed by loneliness.<br class="">You were meant to inhale those smoky nights<br class="">over a bottle of flat beer, to sweep stuck onion rings<br class="">across the dirty restaurant floor, to wear the frayed<br class="">coat with its loose buttons, its pockets full of struck matches.<br class="">You’ve walked those streets a thousand times and still<br class="">you end up here. Regret none of it, not one<br class="">of the wasted days you wanted to know nothing,<br class="">when the lights from the carnival rides<br class="">were the only stars you believed in, loving them<br class="">for their uselessness, not wanting to be saved.</p><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span><span style="font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif;" class="">- Dorianne Laux</span></div><div style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif;" class=""> <br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div></div></body></html>