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Poetry Reading: All I Have Left
Follen Church | Poetry Service | October 30th, 2022
I belong to a Unitarian Universalist Church in Lexington, MA called Follen Church. I was asked to read an original poem during a service that focused on creative writing and music. The poem I wrote and performed was called All I Have Left.
The reading was recorded, and I’ve placed it online for you to view! I hope you enjoy this poem.
About the poem
The first draft of All I Have Left was written in November 2021 under the original title “All that is left” and the final edits were made before the reading in October 2022.
The first line I wrote was “you will add yourself to the weight of things” and this led me down a path to conceive of the poem as a list of advice that someone might give if that was all they had left to give.
I wanted to write something inspiring and purposely start the poem by confronting mortality and inevitable sorrow before taking an optimistic turn and laying out the impact that a…
