Where are you?

Important questions...
Where are you at?
How do you honestly feel?
How can you Be Here right now?
My only job,
when I don't know how to be,
Is to just be here.
Both-BE here
and be HERE.
Show up to wherever you are going,
with a finger to your pulse.
I think I have become overly exhausted
by others because I've not been
both Here and Honest.
I smile too much...
my amicable reflexes
are too quick for my body's honesty.
Before I know it
I've smiled and reassured and laughed
my way through an interaction that
I'm dying to escape.
How to show up honestly
while also not feeling panic
about not helping the other
get through the interaction
so much.
This is an area that I need to practice self-care.
Self-sacrifice is my go to
and I'm getting more and more isolated
because it's all too damn hard.
Also...
how to not feel defeated when
I'm not met with another's self-sacrifice.
This is almost a constant.
Honesty and presence are my prayer
especially in this time.
Where real needs
Need real presence.
Not exhausted forced smiles
but just whoever you are,
wherever you may be.

Winter's Interior

Spruce and white
Spine and soap
This page, this note.
Letting myself be held lightly by winter
It's a complicated friend
But I'm withholding judgment
Until I greet the clean seed
With it's changed body,
face to face.
I can't picture myself married
I don't know if it will happen,
I love my dog too much.
The other day we lay snout to nose
I let myself practice holding loosely
(because I know how she likes her space)
I was gazing, and she turns completely away.
She's teaching me about open handed love.
Un-offended love.
And I had thought about our relationship
and how I watch her prancing in the yard
or body heavy on the couch
with the little slits of her eyes shut so nice
and how my breath slows down watching her
while my heart fills brim
and the fullness of this starry skied relationship..
And she has never spoken one word to me at all.
Not one single spoken word.
So much depth and not one word.
And I loved that thought.