I Am Getting Better At Letting Things Die

I am getting better
at letting things die.

Every 3 months I take the belongings out from under my bed
and I stuff them into garbage bags,
leave them by curbsides
leave them to decay and get carried away,
It is a ritual I do to remind myself
that you don’t miss the garbage once it’s gone,
that you do not have to hold onto scraps and old, shrivelled memories;
you can leave them out to get carried away and love the
blank, clean spaces they have left behind instead.

I am getting better
at letting people go

And so every 2 weeks I go through my telephone
I backspace numbers
and delete old messages,
I refuse to give my mind
a space to linger in the places where love no longer lives,
It is a ritual I do to remind myself
that there will always be new numbers to add and new messages
to pour over and keep.

I am getting better
at letting things flow

But every week or so I still pull up a blank email template,
enter your address and stare at the cursor
wondering what I could possibly have left to say,
before closing the screen out and walking away,
It is a ritual I do to remind myself
that it’s okay to have let people matter
And that sometimes those memories just need to collect in the space beneath the bedsheets
for a while
before I’m ready to take them outside

And fall in love with the clean, blank spaces
that you, too, left behind.