A three-part, unmetered poem on being a doctor in the Philippines.

Part 1 ⁠– Candor

I am a Physician,
A child of Prometheus and his kindred flame.
The hand that reaches down from heaven—
To till the loam that longs for arid winds.

I am a steward, an instrument, their paragon.
I am what they yearn to hope, and live to fear.
I am a leper, a knight in all its glorious ceremonies.
I am their origins, and their bitter-wonderful demise.

I barter in the silhouettes of their anguish;
Into every sphere we furnish and create.
They shine tender eyes to which dissolve me.
They liquify and macerate the core to which I reside.

We then exchange our sorrows and solitudes,
Twisting and piercing each other sensibilities,
Scouring the world of magical possibilities,
They then spite, leaving our trust to ruins.

They understand not, they want not.
Physicians do not bring life, nor prolong it,
They ransom, acquiese, envelop, bargain for—
The dust of life that clings to all men.

We do not live to play god,
We serve merely to connect the Lines—
That which bind and tangle mortality,
And separates the fragile world behind.

We are the medium to which the fingers reach the soul;
Flaying apart at the seams of what remains to be—
The final question, the immutable resolution—
Death, the denouement, the beyond, the inexisting.

We are clay, molded from taut roots,
A bastion, a fleeting second of kindness.
To them we surrender, to them we digress.
We are what our patients want us to be—

What they need us to be…