The Quiet

You ask how the job is crazy.
I ask how to keep my humanity within it.

The small moments
my life is grounded in them.
Our lives are grounded in them.

I keep wondering about the meaning of it all.
Not whether life holds inherent meaning
I don’t know if it does.

And.

We, as humans, cultivate meaning
to live vividly, vulnerably.
It’s not a requirement,
I won’t judge what gets you
through the day-to-day.
But for me
I want meaning.
I want to wash myself anew in it.

Maybe it’s coping.
Maybe it’s survival.
Maybe it’s my scream into the void
that my life is worth something,
if not for someone else,
then for me.

This job can be challenging, surreal,
dark and gorgeous.
I write this in a time of struggle.
Life is tension, as it goes.

And in that tension
in the blood, the bones,
the devastation of cancer,
the old COPD’r who pulls Poppop back to me.
The young girl who remembered my name
during my initial assessment,
her voice reaching for me again,
asking if I was still there,
grasping for something steady.

There’s a profound quietness.

In the chaos,
the wailing siren,
the deep sorrow,
the small moments of hope,
whether real or simply comforting
the quietness is beautiful.