It’s a chilly early November evening with a slight breeze blanketing the rocky layered hills of northern Nevada. I sit with my knees pulled to my chest while my mind is jumping daintily across the surfaces around me: rigid stones, smooth petals and jagged trunks of diminutive trees. Colors of purples, greens, and pinks all splash along the tops of exotic plants bursting through the surface of dirt and miniature rocks into clumps and clusters above ground. The sun is preparing for its goodbye, causing a dark and heavy shadow behind a hill of rocks tacked up onto each other like dark slivers of life accepting their dull lifelessness.

I am here to write and explore every direction and turn of my mind. The colors and characteristics of this land inspire me. They lift my mind and lead it down the path of freedom giving direction to the pencil in my hand waiting impatiently to make connection with the note pad that it has many times before danced upon.

I close my eyes and allow my mind to travel. I inhale the cool air and listen for the whispers my heart is willing to let go – but there is nothing. My mind is going nowhere and my heart is not catching a thing. I have a slight idea of what I want to write about, I have for days, but my paper is catching dust by now. The blank white sheet with its pen-striped blue lines are only accompanied by the one word my heart aches to write about – His name.

I lie back onto the rocky earth and feel the coolness of the rocks pierce my back – the same pierce I felt in my heart when I read his name. Memories flood my eyes and emotions take over my body from drowning in “what could have been.” I dive head-first into my soul to try and fish out the next word to my poem.

Words slam into my head, fighting each other to be the one in which I begin my journey of thoughts transformed into sentences; pronouns, adjectives, even punctuation scratching, pulling, and fighting their way to the tips of my fingers wanting so impatiently to pulse through the lead in my pencil.

There are so many words, so many directions influencing my mind, but absolutely no beginning; there is nothing to help lead my pencil across my paper to burst through the boundaries my heart has built to protect this boy.

But wait, why am I trying so hard to protect him when he shattered me? How is that okay to treat him better than he ever treated me? It’s not, especially, since he pushed me to the side while he was my full focus.

I can feel the rage and frustration vibrating on my tongue; words wanting to break through the lock on my lips to sputter out on my paper. I can feel the words pushing against the wall around my heart, molding their letters to fit the cracks splintering through my body. They want to desperately get out and show their true emotions: hurt, betrayal, embarrassment.

I sit up, open my eyes, and feel the electric shock inside of my veins when my pencil starts majestically moving across my paper. I close off my mind and just let my heart communicate with the world, allowing every word that wants to escape to be set free.

Crossing t’s, dotting i’s my pencil is not missing anything. My mind’s letting go and my heart is letting the pain and misery free. Seconds, minutes, what felt like hours passed by. There are words jumping everything around me and relief filling the spaces they left behind.

I exhale. I didn’t realize I had been holding my breath.

I look down to read my loss of love written on paper.

It read: “I’m down this pain in my frost bitten rain,


letting go of fire, I have nothing to gain.


Watch it leave in the wind to see never again,


letting out a sigh because this is the end.


No more piercing in my heart to tear me apart


I see a new beginning and this is the start.


No wonders of why as the sun leaves the sky,


turn around and give our memories a promising goodbye.”

I look into the distance and notice a single orange flower smiling at me. For the first time in 9 months, I am able to smile back.

Everything is going to be okay. I can let go now.