Regrets Poetry Competition

We asked you to create a poem that captured the power of regrets and you didn’t disappoint. All of the submissions were beautifully written and it made it tough to judge the winning entries but congratulations go to….

1st Prize: £200.00 Hayley Johnson

2nd Prize: £100.00 Peter Mason

3rd Prize: £75.00 Josie Gardener

Regrets

by Hayley Johnson

Regrets

Shadows dance across his face, street lamps light up his ashen skin, I see tears, brushed, then shrugged away, but his sorrow remains intact, here to stay.

I want to touch, chiselled features, angular, tempting but when love burns deep, with shame I turn away, trying to keep my own tears at bay.

What cruel fate that allowed, this romance to run unchecked like a summers breeze, ripples on the surface, still waters ran deep beneath as did my feelings, unbidden but emerging and echoed back. I feel his love seep, down cracks in the pavement upon which we stand as the truth emerges victorious. I belong to another, back from Iraq, I cannot leave him, this local hero although, my love weathered and worn, is threatened under the cracks of temptation.

So I do the right thing, I break my heart in two and watch it be stamped upon under his feet as he walks away. I watch with tears and deep regret, and deepened shame. I wait for a final glance, a coveted gaze, forlorn with hope, but it withers and dies, and fear mingles. I am the perpetrator, I crush romance, with a single truth that shattered any illusions of love and hope and how I wished I could lie beneath him once more, as he made me whole.

So I return, my hero waits, war-torn, a fragment of his former self and he depends on me, to resurrect his faith, so I stay. With trembling fingers, chilled to the bone, I walk, silently, with tears frosted, my needs at bay, so I can mourn my love and care for the man who walks in his place day after day.

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