I wanted to share 2 poems I wrote while in the hospital.
Neither one is "finished," however each one is hopefully a seed that will continue to grow as I work to become the man I've always known myself to be.
So, here we go.
As You Drove Away from the Institution
Today, as I watched your car
Turn within the parking lot,
Leaving, driving Home, Gone.
I stood at the window, like a specter,
Moving frantically, hovering from window pane to window pane,
Trying to see your car for another second...
The tears poured down my cheeks
I felt the burning saline
I tasted my despair.
I thought of all the times in our early twenties
As I drove away from your dorm, thinking,
How much I loved you
How much I would miss you
When I would hear your voice again
And how I would cry for missing your physical presence in my life.
Today, as I watched your car
Turn within the parking lot,
Leaving, driving Home, Gone.
I cried for the boy who never suspected,
That this is where he would be.
An Institutional Thesis
Once upon a time,
My fairytale of you and I,
My dreams of what we were
to be, to become
I thought I knew how this
Would all turn out.
Yet, here I am, sitting at a dorm room desk,
Writing in a notebook,
PJ's on, industrial lights and beaten
broken furniture, with no fresh air,
no phone, no computer, no wayto reach out
Working on the hardest thing
I've ever worked on,
37 years old, striving, dedicated.
This is not Harvard.
This is not Boston College.
This is not Iowa State.
I am not working on my dissertation.
I am working on my life.
So, thanks for sharing this part of the journey with me.
Be well, love your neighbor as you love yourself, and remember to actually love yourself.
-Ari
