To Love and Let Go

To live in this world
is to kneel at the altar
of a fragile god.

Everything we touch
breathes its way toward an ending.
And still,
we touch.

We open our arms
not to forever,
but to the ache of now.
To the warmth
of something passing through us—
a hand,
a gaze,
a season,
a song.

We do not fall in love
with permanence.
We fall in love
with people who forget to call back,
dogs who will not outlive the winter,
sunsets that last
only six deep breaths.
We fall in love
with mornings that cannot be repeated
and the smell of bread
that fades before the second slice.

And we love—
fully.
Recklessly.
With both hands outstretched,
as if the act itself
could stop time.

They say
to love what is mortal
is to be foolish.
But I say
to love what is eternal
is to cheat the living.
Because eternity
does not bleed.
And only what bleeds
can kiss you back.

I have loved people
knowing they would die.
I have held them
against my ribs,
felt their breath
in my hair,
their heartbeat
like a second drum
inside my chest.
And I have known—
deep in the hollows
where instinct lives—
that they were never mine
to keep.

Still,
I built whole constellations
from their laughter.
I made cathedrals
out of their flaws.
I whispered their names
into the corners of silence
and called that prayer.

Because to hold something mortal
close—
knowing it will break—
is the bravest thing
we do as humans.
It is also
the most necessary.

Attachment, they say,
is suffering.
But detachment,
done too early,
is a kind of death
all its own.

We are not statues.
We are seafoam
with hearts.
We are water
that remembers
how to cradle fire
without extinguishing it.

And we love
not despite impermanence,
but because of it.

Because the cherry blossom
blooms for one week
and is gone.
Because the dog
will grow old
and tremble
and sleep into the soil.
Because the mother’s voice
will one day
become a voicemail
you no longer play aloud.

Still—
you love.

What else is there?

To love
is not to own.
To love
is to stand at the edge
of vanishing
and sing.

You hold it
tight against your bones,
this fragile thing—
as if your marrow
could protect it,
as if your breath
could anchor it in place.
But it was never meant
to stay.

And when it leaves—
as everything does—
you unclench.
You unfold your fingers
from its warmth,
and you say thank you.

That is the part
they do not teach:
the letting go.

Letting go
is not forgetting.
Letting go
is not betrayal.
Letting go
is not surrender.

It is a final act
of love.

The kind that says:
“I will not trap you
in memory’s cage.
I will not carve your face
into stone.
I will not freeze your laugh
like a museum relic.”

Instead,
I will let your impermanence
run through me
like a river,
and trust
that what mattered
will settle in my sediment,
quiet and true.

Is this love—
this risking of the heart
on a thing so easily lost—
an act of courage
or futility?

Yes.
It is both.

It is standing
in a burning house
and planting a flower
on the windowsill.

It is giving names
to clouds
knowing they’ll drift
and disappear.

It is writing a poem
for someone
who will never read it.

It is walking barefoot
into the storm
because somewhere
inside the thunder
is the voice
of the one you miss.

To love
is to grieve in advance.
To hold
is to already ache.
And to let go—
ah,
to let go
is to open the fist
and still call it love.

Some might call it madness.
But I call it
the price of being alive
with a heart still tender.

We are not made
for safety.
We are made
for meaning.

And meaning
often arrives
dressed in endings.

So love the mortal.
Press it
against your bones
like a child in the cold.
Know that you will
lose it.
Know that it will
shape you.

And when the time comes—
as it always does—
let it go.

But do not say
you were foolish.
Say instead:
I loved what could leave.
I loved what could die.
I loved what could never
belong to me—
and I did so
without flinching.

That, too,
is a kind of forever.

#Poetry #Loss #LettingGo #LoveAndMortality #CourageToLove #Impermanence #Emotional #ToLoveAndLetGo #Life