Photo: SC Martinez

Published in Five Minutes Lit, September 14, 2026

When I blurt out the wrong thing to you, again, and see pain on your face, I yearn to leap into the future after lots of distractions have piled up high in front of my ill-timed and ill-conceived comment, so it won’t be posing there like a flashing red behemoth glaring, making us both want to run far away, screaming, “You really screwed it up this time. There’s no going back.” Which I totally get, but how about going forward? Clean slate? Blank sheet? Turn the page? Let bygones be bygones? Think about it while I tape my mouth shut.