A/N: This is a little more than blatant plagiarism of Dorianne Laux's Antilamentation. Because my fic brain isn't working.

Regret nothing. Not the off-white fragments of crystallized calcium you braced, gloved, without a thought. Not the shoe box full of photographs under your bed, a family you knew better than to disappoint. Not that blue hollow fiber sleeping bag scrunched up below your chin, against bone saws whizzing, and the wetness of a de-contamination shower, and those foolish reindeer ears. Not the silly experiments both of you conjured, thinking them brilliant at the time; remember the sea monkeys and smile quietly.

You were meant to receive that letter, to wear this blue coat day after day, to be her grad student, to get that symmetrical gold star from her and pretend it doesn't matter to you. You've done it over again approximately seventeen times, in your mind, and it always ends in that symposium, where he says the same things and you listen.

Remember her palm against glass in half-hearted surrender; remember what it says after Boolean forms and forget her face. Regret none of it, the tears or the rough bandages or the sting of the canine tips in your palm. You'll try hard to say sorry, but she won't hear it today. You'll try harder still to forget the blade gliding into a throbbing heart. To forget faces through glass, both today's and last Christmas's.

You will take the easier path for once and close your eyes, hiding those thirty silver coins under your pillow.