October 5, 2015October 26, 2018 Kelsey Horton

Let It Be

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Let it be easy.

Let it happen slower than you wanted,

let it frustrate you,

let the existential realizations hit you in the produce aisle when you least desire them.

Let the beads of water drip messily off of your bunch of cilantro,

pooling into your lopsided green basket,

the shellshock that your life is nothing like you pictured it would be.

 

Let it slow you down.

Let it be the second degree burn that you barely notice

as your eyes shuffle towards concrete, trying to

push your hurried and ignorant way

through the crowd of zombified cell phone strangers.

 

Let it be simple.

Let the years of your own gossiping trickle away,

let the biting criticism of friends shimmer off of your skin,

feel the electrifying wounds of suicide survivor guilt

release their claws from your fleshy garbled-up soul.

(Who are you now without all of that weight?)

 

Let it be a mystery.

Let it be the gaggles of new people you meet all at once,

let it be the awkward cafeteria meals consumed together,

poking at green plastic trays, prying through the ice, not yet knowing

which of these people will become your

bridesmaids and roommates and betrayers and ex-friends,

and those lovers that you will later wonder about

until you collide with them on the city sidewalk six years later

looking perfectly the same as you remember.

 

Let it be unexpected.

Let it be the basement apartment you moved into and didn’t realize was perfect,

the one that smelled like mildew in the summer but was

around the corner from a rainbow-painted yoga studio that housed

the teachers and career that you didn’t know you needed.

 

Let it be authentic.

Let every word wring so deeply with your own spirit that

your lifelong best friend can smell you in every sentence,

she can tuck her hair behind her ear,

one hand on her cat,

one hand on her pen,

and circle every inky place where you grasp for gimmicks

to evade the illumination of your own voice.

 

Let it soften you.

Let it hold your hand and ease you off that red holy ledge —

blowing a kiss to the person you have been,

edging into the force of the person you are about to become.

(Who do you want to become?)

 

Let it be like the neon blue sweater you keep at the back of your closet,

the glamorous one with the feathery boa sewn into it,

the one that perfectly fits your body  but that you never wear —

you just smile at it serenely as you step into your day,

knowing that its movie star glitz watches over you as you

unfurl

and

take

flight.