Letting It All Go

Letting It All Go

In the hush before the dawn, the world holds its breath—
a single candle flickers,
its light trembling over the edge of a tired night.

I stand where the river bends,
its surface a mirror of every thought that has ever clung
to the bone of my spine: love, regret, the quiet ache
of words left unsaid.

A stone slips from my palm,
its weight suddenly absurd,
and it disappears beneath the current,
carrying with it the rust of old grievances,
the silt of “should have,” the grit of “must be.”

The water does not mourn the loss; it simply flows,
a liquid sigh that smooths the jagged stones,
that slides past reeds that once whispered my name—
now only the wind answers.

I watch the sky bleed gold into pink,
the sun pulling itself up from the horizon’s throat,
and feel the pull of gravity loosen its grip.
Each breath exhaled is a surrender, a soft surrender,
a letting‑go of the invisible cords that tethered me
to the shore of what was once certain.

The trees, ancient and patient, shed their leaves without ceremony,
their branches rising, bare, toward the endless blue.
They do not cling to the green that fell; they trust the next spring—
so do I, in this fragile moment, trust the empty space
where anxiety once sat like an uninvited guest.

The world, ever‑turning, does not pause for our hesitations.
It invites us to step into the quiet, to taste the coolness
of air unburdened, to feel the pulse of the earth beneath,
steady and sure, as if it were humming a lullaby for the soul.

So I release—
the sharp edge of a memory, the heavy cloak of expectation,
the echo of a promise that never fully formed.
I let the wind sweep through the corridors of my mind,
scattering them like dandelion seeds across an open field.

In that scattering, there is a promise:
that what is let go becomes the seed of something new,
that emptiness is not a void but a fertile plain,
ready to be written upon with fresh ink and brighter lines.

And as the sun climbs higher, painting the river in molten amber,
I find myself lighter—no longer a vessel brimming,
but a vessel open, inviting the tide to come and go,
to bring in wonder, to take away the weight,
to teach me, once more, the simple, timeless art
of letting it all go.