Deprecated: (rune) mysql_connect(): The mysql extension is deprecated and will be removed in the future: use mysqli or PDO instead in /afs/athena.mit.edu/activity/r/rune/web_scripts/lit_view.php on line 42
Regret

My mother folds
the laundry, her shoulders collapsing
in toward her troubled
neck. She looks
down.

"I never should have married
your father," she says, scolding
a bend of fabric into a dull
crease. "I deserved
better than this."

As she searches for more
clothing to fold, I see it — a whisper
of the young girl she once was, of the happy woman
she once yearned to be —

but the dream vanishes, gone
like smoke from a birthday candle, and I watch
my mother fold the laundry, her splintered
fingertips snagging on the silks.

Teresa Gao