Letting Go

My soul swells
and searches for meaning,
the contents of my life
perfumed and poisoned
and contained in old glass bottles
of bright diaphanous colors
that I carry over the precarious
violence of a Tuscan
tiled floor.

I live in the daily anxiety
of breaking one.

But should I drop one bottle
I might find that
it contains nothing any longer.
The past dies
like all else.

Even the bottle sealed with glue
to capture the sage’s final dying breath
contains the memory of a hope
and nothing more.
Even the breath has dissipated.

And should I drop the bottle
once housing the most potently noxious
of truths, I may find that they too
turned from blood
to water
and then air.

You might as well
let go.
Life does not wait
for anyone.