Just Being / Staying

Just Being / Staying

Two poems on presence without leaving

Just Being

When nothing is required of me

I stopped trying to arrive.

Stopped asking the moment

to become something else.

I let the breath come

without counting it.

Let the body exist

without explanation.

The sky didn’t ask me

what I planned to do with the day.

The floor held me

without requiring proof.

Thoughts passed like weather—

noticed, not chased.

Feelings softened

when I didn’t name them enemies.

There was nothing to earn here.

Nothing to perform for.

Even the ache was allowed

to sit down beside me.

In the quiet, I remembered:

presence is not a skill.

It is what remains

when I stop leaving myself.

For a moment—

no past tugging my sleeve,

no future knocking ahead—

just this pulse, this aliveness,

and the gentle truth

that I am already

where I need to be.

— Flower InBloom

Staying

I didn’t add meaning.

I didn’t subtract the mess.

I stayed.

When the mind reached for answers,

I let the question breathe instead.

When the body spoke in sensation,

I listened without interruption.

Nothing holy happened.

Nothing broke open.

The moment didn’t glow.

It simply remained.

I learned that stillness

is not the absence of movement—

it is the absence of escape.

So I stayed

when the urge to improve myself arose.

Stayed

when silence felt unfamiliar.

Stayed

when being here felt like enough

and somehow also like everything.

This is how I practice love now—

not by becoming more,

but by leaving less.

— Flower InBloom