Let Go

Please, hold this picture against light and tell me what you see:
Hold it against this tropical Costa Rican valley and
tell me you don’t a person quitting a landscape;
hold it against all snowy patches of this abnormal Helsinkian winter to
tell me you don’t see hands trembling within the pockets of that hard,
brown jacket.  

This picture is my starting point when I’m told “let go, man;”
it’s a sunset in Suomenlinna
Island: a navy ragged bed, dissolved clouds into an overhead fog,
a trace of warmth failing to reach my feet.           Me
turning left alone, untouched, perhaps, or unmoved
by its might.

Hands    That       Tremble.

Lips mumbling but muted.

My body is tied to the ground of this unlighted hallway by
the luggage my fists clasp. 

“I don’t know how to do this,” I say.

and my feet come back to where I still see you across the door.
I stench of fear for a freezing world.

  “you’ll be fine,” you reply.                          

 and the doors shut.

Unlighted, I walk in the hallway; I know where the steps are anyway.
off, requited and mistaken: a winter night
that’s been dark for quite some days
awaits, and I must
find the courage to make this snow crunch
beneath my feet.