by Sigrid E. Mortensen
© 2023
You don’t have to hate a thing
To let it go.
You don’t have to wait for the shirt
To fall into tatters in the closet
Or the leftovers to sour
And gather thick layers of mold
In the deepest recesses of the refrigerator.
You don’t have to hate a thing
To let it go.
You don’t have to rail against the home
Or the job
Or the relationship
That you once adored
But have long since outgrown.
You don’t have to find every fault in a thing
To rationalize bidding it adieu.
You can acknowledge
Simply
That it no longer fits
That desire for it has faded
That it no longer quite suits your current
Living
Appetites.
Just as it is not necessary
To stuff a body to revulsion
Before deciding to stop filling it with food,
So is it unnecessary
To feed on distaste for where you are
To get to where you want to go.
We humans seem to believe
That we must build a case
Argument by argument
Stacked solid and uncrackable
For leaving something behind.
We must have reasons.
There must be logic.
It must be possible for everyone else to see
And confirm
Our conviction.
They must all agree that we were in the right
To make a change in our world.
We somehow think that hate greases the hinges
Of the exit door
That it makes the opening wider.
But hate is a poor lubricant.
It grows old
And rancid
And sticky
And soon the door won’t swing.
What we often fail to see is that
In hating a thing
We bind ourselves the closer to it.
We sew threads of energy as strong as steel
From us to it and back again
One stitch more for every
Justification
Then wonder why we cannot shake the thing
For years to come,
Instead revisiting the trauma
That we ourselves have created by
Regularly traversing
Every strand of hate.
It is not necessary to hate a thing
To let it go.
No, in fact
The silicone spray that glides the path of true releasing
Lies in gratitude
In blessing
In love.
Thank your Leaving Thing.
Thank it for its role in your life.
Appreciate its contribution to your journey.
Remember the love
The hope
The promise you felt for it
Once
At the beginning
And send it on its way with sincerest desire
That it serve
In good stead
Another.