What Soothes You

by Laurie Smith, Soul Coaching Practitioner

What is your thing?

The thing that fills you up

When your soul grows parched and dry?

What brings you comfort?

Is it strawberries?

A sunset?

A long sip of an ice cold beverage

Or warm tea with honey and lemon?

Or is it a paintbrush

Dipped in acrylics or oils

Brushed across a canvas for only you to see?

Is it a butterfly

Landing softly on a flower

Drinking sweet nectar

Then flying off

As if it never was?

What warms you when you are cold?

Perhaps a campfire

As you cuddle with a loved one

Close enough to see one spark

Giving birth to more

Exploding upward

Grey smoke rising

A pop so close and loud

You feel like you’ve escaped gunshot

Dramatically thawed from the inside out

Scorching hot

But not close enough to burn

Or is it hot sand?

Perhaps on your cold feet

Or sizzling skin on the entire back of your body

As you flop onto the baking beach

After a springtime swim

In icy ocean water?

What quenches your thirst?

Is it a fizzy drink

Bubbling in a clear glass jar

As you watch the bubbles rise

Circular

Curling

Rising to the top

Where they cluster

Then divide

As your straw

Enters their field

Breaking them apart

And you feel those bubbles in you

All the way down to your toes?

What fills you up?

After you’ve taken cardboard box after box out to the curb

Or to the dump

Or to the goodwill collection box

Then turned back to hear your own echo

Against empty walls and hard floors,

Ripped off carpets

Emptied of memories as you prepare to begin again

What warms your heart?

On those mornings

when a full day lies before you

No plans

No guests

No distractions

From the inner voice that has waited so long to be heard?

What clears your mind?

When you think you are alone

and are not sure what you’re feeling, exactly

Is it loneliness?

Sadness?

Emptiness

Or quiet excitement

building at the prospect of nothing left to do?

What fuels your inner creator?

Emptiness?

Questions?

Encouragement?

Nature?

Sounds of beating waves against the sand like a shaman’s drum?

What is your name?

When there is no one left to remember who you were?

When your own babyhood has gotten washed away

As if by a flood

Tearing down the gutters

Rushing down the street

Picking up speed

Faster and faster

Past houses and driveways

Luring children

To rinse their ankles

Splashing in puddles as it passes

Before rain merges with overflowing

Streams and dreams

Heading to the sewer grates and out to the bay

And then the sun comes out again

So hot and parched and searing

That no one remembers.

What soothes your soul?

Is it a cool rag dipped in ice water and rose petals

Resting across eyelids with a gentle touch

A healing whisper

A wish

For all that is in your highest good?

Or perhaps an empty page

In a new journal

Or blank sketchbook

Freshly sharpened pencils

Pastels, crayons, charcoal

A soft spot to sit upon in the woods

Thick bark of a redwood friend

To lean up against

So you can rest and sketch

No one noticing you’ve gone missing

Until the sunset

Stretches across the sky

And the sun sinks down, saying

Adieu to another empty, open day?

What soothes you, then?