I'm trying to get better at sitting with my self
(we’re in this 'til the end, after all).

I'm trying to listen and not judge,
to ask her (kindly) where those thoughts came from.
Whose judgments are being repeated.

It's not that it's a comfortable journey.
She hurls words in poisoned darts,
with wild eyes of blistering flame,
so sure of my faults that
I believe her more than I've believed anything
in our whole life.  

But I know what it's like to be in her body.
So lately I've asked her to sit next to me, quietly,
just for a moment,
just for a pause.

I think it's working.

She's taken to sitting beside me more often these days,
arms wrapped around hunched knees.
She speaks gentler here,
tells me I am scared we are not enough.
But she lets me place a hand on her shoulder,
and remind her: We always have been.

We breathe slowly as we soundlessly observe
the cosmic traffic of shooting neurons.
Of clusters of clusters of memories
and half-said things.

And I'm finding that, after all this time,
I am sitting well with myself.