August 2018 – Arrival
My mother hugs me
Goodbye
In a city where
No one knows
The color of our eyes,
And I learn in an instant
The difference between
A house
And a home.
They use my full name here
Elizabeth
It swallows me like an
Oversized garment, and
I wonder who this person is
Besides lonely.
“May I sit with you?”
A woman with a
Porchlight smile
Calls me by my
True name, and
Joy blossoms around us
Like the hydrangeas
My mother grows in
Summertime.
Her laughter is
Generous
Sustaining
A rainwater baptism for this
Beginning.
Maybe
I could grow here, too.
We arrive at a
Door marked with a
Post-It note,
Yellow and promising as a
Risen sun:
“Come on in! —N”
Inside, the air
Savors of spices and
Hums with a refrain
Sweet as being known:
“You are home here.”
January 2019 – Preclinical
We gather into a crowded
Lecture hall
Where one man celebrates
Survival
While another
Mourns
The partner he lost.
Joy and Pain
Claw for breath
And drown each other
In the sea of our
Leeching
Silence.
Later,
We gather around
Our kitchen table and
Use the clumsy edges of
Our words
To carve a space
For all that is
Harsh
In this new landscape.
Our reflection weaves a
Collective mirror —
In it, we are still
Whole
In this place we share.
February 2020 – Clerkships
A man by my
Brother’s name
Hums a hymnal tune
As liters of amber fluid
Flow
From his abdomen
Like sand through an
Hourglass.
His eyes drift closed
As the hymn
Limps
Through the air,
A wounded creature
Seeking a place to
Rest.
I return home to our gospel:
Footsteps in the
Third floor hallway,
Whispers over the
Choral backdrop
Of our faucet as it runs.
We hold toothbrushes
In our hands and
Each other
In our words
As we resurrect into the
Soulful abundance
Only togetherness provides.
March 2021 – Pandemic
A child in a backyard tree
Reaches
Trusts
Falls
As what seemed sturdier than truth
Rots through in an
Instant.
Everything has
Died this year
Except the grass
On our hill
In Kaskey Park, where
We sit on towels
Six feet apart –
A cotton archipelago of
Households marooned.
At afternoon’s end,
We will drift apart
But for now,
Each gaze is a
Lighthouse
Illuminating a safe path
Home.
We will not wreck
In darkness
Today.
March 2022 – Match Day
The future arrives like
Strong coffee, and
Rose buds, and
You and Me, and
All beginnings that have ever
Kept their promise of
Beautiful things.
We walk to school
The way we did
On the first day,
And I understand how
The word close
Can mean both
An ending
And
A state of such nearness
As to be
Inseparable.
Envelopes hatch
Open
As freed wings spread to meet
The updraft that will
Carry them away, and
I remember
How we sat
All together
On the living room floor.
How a love language can be
Sunlit picnics
Potluck dinners
Gummies from the glove box
Notes outside bedroom doors
A Little Dipper we still might find.
How we built a house
That became
The most beautiful
Home
I’ve ever known.
I make a wish on the
Ladybug wrapping
Of a mother’s gift
And know it will come
True:
This home stays with us.
EB Messineo is a CDY1 at the Perelman School of Medicine.
Image by Phoebe Cunningham, an MS1 at the Perelman School of Medicine.
