leaving leaving is the process from fullness into emptiness from the familiar circle of life the routines undone the streets i knew by heart the people i kept meeting the names and labels that had gathered on my skin toward a place entirely unknown where a new life waits to be written before i go i take out everything i had hidden in my heart and say goodbye to it piece by piece memory rises and feeling rises with it one by one i empty the rooms within me until i am almost as i was when i first arrived unfurnished unclaimed open what remains is a blankness echoing with my fear of loneliness my longing for freedom and the questions i still cannot answer what is freedom what is happiness when i first came here i was drifting in a river carried by the current thinking only of making things now i have to place my own hands on the helm no longer mistaking the waves for fate or the shore for salvation i will miss the days i lived here but i must learn again how to sleep inside loneliness how to eat inside uncertainty how to recognize desire in the blank and through the act of leaving turn freedom from an idea into a life i practice every day