Letting Go

Photo by Dan Gold on Unsplash

I keep all of my love for you in a gilded box that easily opens, easily closes

The first time you toddled away from me, giggling

I thought it might come in handy one day

When you didn’t need me so much

When I didn’t need to be needed so much

When I was ready for the ultimate act of parenting

Letting go

 

I am nobody’s daughter, nobody’s mother right now

This notion sits atop a striking monument erected to a job well done

Beside it looms a dark, dank well crowded with echoes of a shared life
The hypnotic pull of a lifelong pledge to serve, protect and belong to is seductive and

I must take careful steps to kneel at the right altar

 

Sensing where you end and I begin is isolating yesterday’s blood from today’s

With your essence exquisitely entwined around my heart and all major organs

I must extract you slowly, precisely, to avoid shock

As I am performing open-heart surgery on myself without anesthesia

I breathe me in, I breathe you out

And steady my hands

 

The elders offered remedies for removing pregnancy stretch marks,

Not one said what to do with loose, benched-parent skin

How to graft it onto another part

How to take up more space

How to tether purpose beyond another person

Steadily crafting chapters of a story where I appear in cameo

 

There are more rooms in my heart than I will ever have time to open

While infinite love remains for you in that gilded box that easily opens, easily closes

It is time for ME to leave the nest; to relearn myself

So I reach for the box that has all of my love for me

It is worn, antique gold embedded with emeralds

It also easily opens,

Quietly blowing my mind