="regret" CONTENT= --- There's a whirring thing aboard one of the platforms. It blows air, and they call it a 'fan.' The fan was, until now, another small resistance. I cannot hear shuffling nor steps while it whirs. Thus, I usually stop it and leave it off. This time was not a usual time. I couldn't find anything to eat. Not inside the walls, not under the cabinets, not behind the cabinets. I searched the sights and the sounds for any sign, but there was nothing. Agitation was pulling me every which way. Thus, I turned the fan on. I do not know why I did. I did not know if it would help. But the sound blotted out all else. My surroundings, and the sound of my thoughts. I could focus, pull myself together. I laid in stillness, paying my focus to the whir that kept me whole. And I looked at the wall. At the cabinets. At the pieces strewn all about. I wonder how the wall would've looked, before I had torn it open by limb. I wonder how I'd see the cabinets, if their lids were still present. I wonder where all the pieces across the floor came from. I wouldn't have to if I spared even a second to see the whole. The blame lies on the passage of time, or so I've told myself all along the way. The destruction, the mayhem that I had seen several times over, was because I made it that way. In seeking to prolong myself, I string up my own prison, and I form the bars and lock. I did not think about it then. I couldn't hear my thoughts over the fan, and soon after I turned back to the matter of perpetuation. But now I am here, thinking about it. Feeling about it. The things I do, I wish they weren't already done. ---