Thankful

Like a warm blanket, life wraps itself around me

I thank my legs
For their strength

I thank my skin
For persistently healing

I thank the weak parts of me
For trusting again and again

I thank the strong parts of me
For the resolve and for the stubborn courage

I thank the night
For solace and reprieve

I thank the morning light
For dancing over my eyelids

I thank the sadness
For deepening my heart

I thank the mystery
For making me trust

I thank the desert
For making me desperate

I thank the water
How quickly it can heal

I thank life
For its relentless, undeterred nature

Above all,
I thank my Lord
For all of this
And that the deepest and truest parts of me can believe in the things that I cannot fully understand, master or express.

Let it be.

Where are the words when we need them the most?
Whether beauty unutterable, pain indescribable or mystery defying conception…
In the moments that evoke such reverence
Silence holds us in gentle stead
Guardian of all that is holy

And so I put down my pen
For a while at least
And surrender to the greatest poem that there is
The poem of life
Of life itself
Unfolding relentlessly
Unstoppably
Graciously

‘Just let it be’
You tell me.
Let it be.

Hospital

A hospital is a place that exposes us
Where we leave our comforts at the door
Our fears come to the fore
And we cannot ignore
the tangibility, the physicality and the fragility of life

We experience so deeply what it is to be human
To need breath, to need balance; both integration and compensation of a complexity of systems

A hospital is like the cordial without the water
So concentrated in the essence of our existence
The extremes of birth, sickness, healing and death all held within those doors

And beyond those doors, I could be anywhere
Despite the schedules and the consistency,
I feel timeless and suspended
Hanging in my own questions
As some answers float around me

But sometimes I just don’t know anymore.
There are things that none of us know
Like if they’re going to make it through the night
Why bad things happen to good people
Or if the suffering will really be worth it one day

And a constant question of: where does the love come from when we have nothing left to give? Because somehow, the love just keeps on giving.

A body houses hearts and whole networks of veins and arteries, encased in skin, both new and old…
A hospital houses loved ones, so much more than bodies.
So where did he go when his body turned cold?
I don’t really know.
In hospitals,
Hearts are restarted, and broken ones mended.
But right now, my heart is left undone.

Together

We all hunger and we all sleep
Labels are no way for us to keep
A haven, where we can find a shoulder
to share the burden, to hold each other
In shared confusion, there is comfort
Whilst outdoors it storms, together we slumber

Can I tell you a secret?
We all hold paradox
Can I tell you that I’m seeking
A place where the locks
Fall from our doors?
And we find assurance in our common smallness
We find we were all asking ‘what is it all for?’

Mystery is our constant companion
So I’ll stop pretending I have the answers
Because love is a fragrance that dances
On the breeze of dusk, drifting over our fences and urging us to trust

I will not condone these walls
I will wander into submergence
I will subvert the egotistic education
That we are saviours and that we cannot fall

For I am falling every day
Onto my knees,
And into my fate
Oh how love is shaping my life
But I am no statue, no shining light

Broken vessel
Are not we all?
Yet our pieces mosaic
And we know the call
To unity.

So I’m sorry.
For the labels and my ego
All that segregates our souls
From knowing that we are here to take care of each other
With the little we hold
Though we scarcely know
The implication of hearts undone
The freedom of eyes wide open
And the healing we will find when we let love expand beneath a grip,
which we cannot sustain anyway.

-Remi Fern