The Poem I Left in the Hospital Chapel
I don't believe in God. I believed in the poem.
I don't believe in God. I never have. But my father was dying, and the hospital chapel was the only room in the building that was quiet enough to think in, and I went there because the waiting room was too loud and the corridor was too cold.
I didn't pray. I wrote. I wrote a poem on the back of a hymn sheet, the only paper I could find, and I left it on the altar where the other prayers were, the ones written on the cards the chapel keeps for people who believe.
The poem was about my father's hands. The way he held a cup of tea with both hands, like the warmth was the point. The way he held a pen, the way he held a hammer, the way he held my hand when I was small and the world was too big to walk through alone.
I don't know if anyone found it. I don't know if the chaplain read it or if a cleaner threw it away or if it is still there, folded into the altar, a poem about a man who did not believe in God written by a daughter who did not believe either.
He lived. The poem is still there, or it is not. The point is that the chapel was the place where the poem had to be written, and the writing was the thing that got me through the waiting.
I still don't believe in God. I believe in the poem.
By Team Writory, for Writory.
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