Afterthoughts

1.
The potential attacker fell,
jaw slightly askew.
That was a hell of a froggy noise he made
as I relaxed and let the bat
slip from my hands.

I suppose I could have waited
to see what he wanted,
to be certain he was hostile,
before I started swinging.

He did not report it, though.
I guess that says something.

2.
She was that remarkable,
wasn’t she?

Damn.

3.
I was offered, once,
six months in a foreign cottage
with nothing to do but write,
nothing to do but collect a stipend
to sit and write in a cottage overlooking the sea,
a cottage in the middle of nowhere,
a cottage so remote there was no
electricity beyond what a generator
could provide…

at 21, with all my work ahead of me,
how is it that such an offer seemed
so not ideal?

4.
I should have cut him
right across his good white face
just a little, just enough
for what he said and what I did
to be commemorated
every time he saw his reflection.

It sounds awful to say it, still.
But it is the truth.
I did not stand up for myself
regardless of consequences.
No matter what might have followed,
I should have.
I should have.
I should have.

5.
These greatest regrets,
it seems,
turn upon
a pivot of violence and art
and sex.  This afterthinking
is logical revisiting of poor
or ill-considered forethought.

6.
Except for this one, today’s,
an afterthought
not drawn in fact from thought,
but from a pure, deep fear:

I should have come
to the doctor’s office
much, much
earlier.