A Morning Ritual

For years, without naming it, I have greeted the morning in the simplest of ways.

Stepping barefoot into the open air,

I would lift my eyes to the sky and breathe in the first light.

Always, Dakota beside me—

her paws pressing into the earth with the same quiet reverence my own heart carried.

I would release my body’s waters into the soil.

It was never an act of disregard.

It was a homecoming—

a return,

a pouring back into the Mother what no longer served me.

A gift surrendered to the vast alchemy beneath my feet,

where the remnants of yesterday would be unmade and reborn as light.

I never called it sacred, yet it was.

It was instinct.

It was trust.

It was the oldest ceremony:

the exchange between being and planet,

between soul and soil.

Now I see the truth—

every drop carried the heaviness of dreams,

the residue of thought,

the small weight of what my body wished to shed.

And Earth, as she always has,

received it without judgment,

transforming it into infinite possibility.

Dakota knew.

She would stand close,

her steady eyes watching the sky with me,

then release her own offering beside mine.

Two beings in silent synchrony—

breathing, letting go,

joining in a ritual older than language.

What I once thought was nothing

was everything.

A covenant unbroken,

sealed each morning in the hush between heartbeat and wind.

Dakota, the witness.

Dakota, the keeper of my mornings.

Dakota, the one who knew that the Earth remembers every gift.