As the man drank the soda, he felt the sting of regret, And began to realize the repercussions of his actions. Slowly, the tears began to wash down his face. Then came the consequences of his transgression.
His sensei came into the fray. His sensei’s presence was like a raging bull. The man got on his knees and bowed in desperation. The slew of emotions made him want to die.
As he begged for forgiveness, His sensei smiled. Then proceeded to pull out a sword. The man became saturated in fear. But he was not given the time to utter a word.
Then he felt the sting of regret.
Author’s note: This poem was originally titled “Soda” because it originally was an apology poem in which somebody drinks someone else’s soda and apologizes about how they were wrong for doing so. The people who read it described how it was very vague and in general it was just difficult to understand what the poem was trying to portray and who was speaking in addition to what was going on within the poem. This made me change the story within the poem such that it was more specific an easier to tell what it was actually referring to with a man drinking a soda and then getting cut down by his sensei for whatever reason. Since the actual poem got more specific I changed the title to something a bit more vague like “Regret” and I felt it fit the new one better that was less centered around soda. Additionally, during revision I added a line break in the last stanza between “As he begged for forgiveness” and “His sensei smiled” in order to dramatize the second line and highlight the tonal shift from that point onward in the poem to a darker, more serious tone. Furthermore, I used consonance (His sensei’s presence) to establish how foreboding and intimidating the sensei’s presence is. The reason for why the sensei kills the man and the man feels regret is left ambiguous as it is not directly relevant to the theme of the poem. The poem is suppose to express how the consequences of a person’s action will always catch up to them and they will receive retribution accordingly. This new theme was really surprising to me as before with “Soda” the tone and theme were relatively light hearted, so this change to a darker tone was surprise to me. In terms of what I like about the poem, I really like how at the end I repeated part of the first line and made it pack that extra punch in the final line of the stanza and properly end the poem.