Letting Go

Letting Go

Letting go
is not one clean motion.
It is a slow unfastening,
fingers loosening
around what once felt permanent.

We began at the bank,
adjoining teller windows,
passing jokes along as
we passed out cash,
a summer for me,
a life for him.

Later there were meals,
bars where the floor throbbed under our feet,
music loud enough
to make the future seem distant.
We talked until closing time,
until words felt endless.

Time moved us apart
without breaking our connection.
Letters replaced laughter,
cards stood in for voices.
Holidays, birthdays—
news folded neatly inside envelopes
never an occasion missed.

Then silence arrived
without explanation.
A fall.
A nursing home with no name.
A card unanswered.

Letting go
began as worry,
then became absence.

The news came sideways,
through a message,
through someone else’s grief.
I wanted one last sentence,
one more sound of his voice,
something unfinished to finish.

There was kindness after—
a brother’s call,
a small book returned,
my younger handwriting still held
in his keeping.

Letting go means
holding that tenderness
without trying to reclaim it.
It means letting gratitude
stand where loss wants to scream.

I remember the guitar,
the pranks,
the dancing,
but mostly the long talks—
how time once seemed like infinity to us.

Now I practice releasing
the future I didn't know had passed:
no more cards,
no more news,
no voice on the other end.

Letting go
is allowing the love to stay
while accepting the goodbye.

Written for my prompt at What's Going On?  -- "Letting Go"