I don’t hear the thunder yet
But I see the black clouds forming
I don’t have a lightning rod
And I’m standing in a puddle.
                                           ljm

Alas it was but in that moment, when your soul cascaded into the night sky, that I understood what a goodbye truly meant. A chill crawled down my spine as your body grew colder by the minute beneath my touch; a solemn awakening on my conscience as grief greeted me yet again. This familiar path I feared to embark on again has resurfaced, baring with its somber recollections - I witnessed you…finally at rest.

Her arms would never turn the corner to greet me as I landed from my flight,
The warmth in her laughter shall fall to silent ears as the house ceases to echo,
Those eyes would never challenge the radiance of the sun again,
For it was in this moment I embraced the season of change, the art of letting go.

Letting go is a natural part of life that arises in manners we may never consider. May it be a goodbye placed upon a past lover, a former roommate, an old apartment, even a job site - goodbyes signify the end of a chapter. 2023 bore many moments of letting go for me as I relished in the art of departure. I lost my grandmother, the woman who raised me. This emotion was overwhelming as it marked the beginning of her legacy that I am now adorned to live. I have encountered many moments of goodbye this year: moving states, a heartbreaking end to a relationship, ending a program, seeking a new field of employment, ending a friendship - the list is exhaustive. Yet, it wasn’t until the passing of my grandmother I truly recognized the beauty of letting go.

The art of departure entails embracing what once was whilst creating space for what is to come. Letting go is freeing yourself of expectations - rather having abundant expectancy.

I saw the end of the wind
In a loop of time and dreams
For the birth of the benevolent
The love in a balloon's belly button
Between fingertip and string
In the grin of a canned child
Who is a belthead
Who ran through deserts
Among fathers and mirages
To pick up desert and water
To forget the sand and the water

I impregnated the end of the wind
With the cludgel of avarice
My head was bursting in wishes
I would spot demons made of gold
Dancing through the channels of future
Dressed in the loss of real love

I saw the end of love
Amid a chaos of winds
Within the fathers of mirages
Blown through the lips of the flying ones
In a mesh of tunnels
Tunnels are good for the dawn
The people of broken angels recover there
Come into my hug of winds
Deserts and waters belong to the wind
I got love for the luggage of your dreams
Red, round, real, racing, ripe love

There must be
a hell where
forgotten
words and lines
dwell.
Similes scamper,
lost like beetles.
Bat winged metaphors
fly to that dark
hell of forgotten
poems.
If those wandering
words escape, they are
gone forever.

When I swim in
the ink, and the
writing streak starts,
the prose comes to
me while I try to nap.
Now, I sleep with
pen and paper,
to put the words in
that white paper
prison where they
belong.