Regret, like pity, changes nothing really, we say to ourselves and, less often, to each other, each time swimming a bit farther, leaving the shore the way the water—in its own watered, of course, version of semaphore—keeps leaving the subject out, flashing Why should it matter now and Why, why shouldn’t it, as the waves beat harder, hard against us, until that’s how we like it, I’ll break your heart, break mine.
— Carl Phillips, from “Radiance versus Ordinary Light,” Riding Westward



















