The Medic Poetic

“Strangely, I heard 
a stranger say: 

I am with you”

-Rainer Maria Rilke

Artist: Laura Ferguson

(source)

I found myself in an acquaintance’s apartment this past fall, sitting on an unfamiliar bedspread, which was adorned in wispy sketched butterflies, looking at the posters on her wall from movies I’d never heard of. I waited for her to come back with glasses of water, and that afternoon we spent talking, laughing and crying together, having barely said a word to each other before. We were both vulnerable that day, telling each other things we may not have admitted to ourselves yet. Excuse the poeticism, but I feel it’s more than appropriate: we shared in our hurt and I felt my spine begin to ache. There it was. Another unforeseen episode of personal growth. 

Artist: Laura Ferguson
(source)

I’ve since become good friends with this person, who is also a poet, and we recently had a conversation about the identity crises and crippling doubt writers face—she was questioning why she even attending school in the first place when she could just write on her own. Listening to her troubles, I realized I often found myself questioning the same thing, as well as to why I pursue poetry so ardently in the first place. 

Even the well-intentioned jokes of my family and friends echo the same doubt that distresses me: the superficially obvious point that poetry has no practical meaning. I could be a pre-med student instead, studying so that I could save lives in the future. I could be studying law so that I may have stake in promoting justice later in life. But I’m not doing either of those things. I chose this. And sometimes I acknowledge this, assess my accountability for it, and feel guilty.

But then there are times when I remember poetry saves lives, too. That fall afternoon I found myself in an acquaintance’s apartment, we spoke in poems. I don’t mean literally—I mean in the same distinct way poetry is able to draw something up outside of yourself, transcending everything you are at the present moment, and conjure sensation out of nothingness. Let me put it another way: reading and writing poetry can be like trying a workout after you haven’t been exercising much lately, and waking up to find your muscles alive and whirring with lactic acid. The soreness is a way of reminding you that the places of your body you temporarily forgot about are still there, still a part of you. Through poetry I’ve been able to remember that I’m here, resisting the urge to disappear.

I didn’t always realize this, but when I’m struggling or at particular low point, I cope by surrounding myself with poetry. I seek out conversations that allow me to bleed. Songs with lyrics that express my acute hurt in ways I could never have phrased it myself become a crux of my everyday life. Poems light my path. I’m not alone. There is someone that carries my same pain around with them like a clenched fist refusing to bloom. This frustration. This disappointment. It isn’t unique to me, and it never has been.

Artist: Laura Ferguson

(source)

This allows me to live, to get outside of myself, to find motivation to act in kindness. And I believe it must do the same for others as well. Though “poet” isn’t a mainstream career path, and nowadays poetry is seen as a niche interest, poetry saves lives. It reveals justice and comfort and growing pains. It makes sure we don’t forget what happened to us. It makes us real, never erased, and none of our experience erased with us. Even past events we’d rather forget. 

Poetry has allowed me to look at my worth and the worth of others with a different approach. The universe—yours and mine and theirs—is a crowded concert hall, and we’re all losing strands of hair on each other’s clothing, stepping on each other’s toes, spilling drops of our drinks onto each other’s shoulders. You are worth everything because you exist. You have the capacity to make others feel deeply, whether you mean to or try to or not, it’s going to happen. I’m not going to tell you that you are a poem. You are first a whole person, flaws and tics and bad days and entirely un-poetic functions…but poetry is made up of pieces of you. Yeah, you. You specifically. And these pieces of you, scattered, have caused growth, delivered justice, have saved lives. 

Read more of Alyssa's work on Floodmark.