We call it letting go,

as if the work were soft-

a gentle unhanding,

a sigh into the dark.

But really, it is labour.

Elbow-deep in what once was,

rolling up sleeves,

turning what we thought was finished

into the start of something fertile.

Rot is not surrender.

It is participation.

The slow alchemy of apple cores, heartbreak,

old selves and half-remembered dreams-

each softened by rain,

each broken open by time.

To compost is to stay.

To lean close when it smells of endings,

and know that endings are only

the earth’s way of rearranging life.

So I do not “let go.”

I kneel.

I dig my hands into the heat of decay

and whisper thanks to the worms

for their silent teachings.

This is how I make peace with change:

not by release,

but by return,

by trusting that the work of rot

is the work of love,

and that what I tend here,

beneath my nails and grief,

will one day feed me again.

- Brigit Anna McNeill