Letting Go (poetry zine/chapbook)

I wrote the first of these poems (_ten years_) in October of 2023 and the last of them in the first week of April of 2024 (_again_). This time period also marked the start of my second year of HRT and my partner of eight years leaving the house three months after I had ended things.

The next six months were a whirlwind of feelings fully expressed -- more fully and honestly than I ever had in my life. More rawly than I had since I was a teenager. These nineteen poems capture and chart those feelings as best I knew how, and the writing of these poems was therapy for the events they reference.

One aspect of starting all this in middle age is that after decades of living a shadow life and absorbing everything I could about transition -- I knew all the cliches. Knew the lessons everyone else learned. Knew every pitfall of the heart to come, and yet, I still needed to do it all.

Knowing and feeling are different things. A heart in the harbor is safe but that's not what hearts are for.

RISO cover printed on Mi Teintes stock, heavy weight laser printed interior.

19 poems over 37 pages