Linda M. Crate: maybe there's more healing

the thing about lessons
is you learn them
after you shatter,

you cannot apply them to

situations or people you once knew;

you can only pray for flowers

that you have never seen bloom to

offer you fragrance and reprieve

for all your past mistakes—

you cannot go into the past and alter

who you were to make the future better,

and some say if they altered all their

mistakes they wouldn't exist;

but i cannot think of how much a better

person i might be if i could just redo the past—

maybe there's more healing i must do.

Linda M. Crate (she/her) is a Pennsylvanian writer whose poetry, short stories, articles, and reviews have been published in a myriad of magazines both online and in print. She has twelve published chapbooks the latest being: Searching Stained Glass Windows For An Answer (Alien Buddha Publishing, December 2022).