What Could Have Been

Reality seems a mirage on the horizon
Till at last you arrive and are passed suddenly by.
Your stomach knots and your heart aches
As you realize the depth of your mistakes.
Life is what you make of it,
Yet often we merely take of it
Simple pleasures to escape from it
And soon all options are erased from it.
What could have been is a cruel fate
That laughs at the disgrace we so eagerly made
And when at last we learn of our shame
We lay uncomfortably inside of our own grave.