The Thief in White Coat

They call me wise

they thank me deep

for knowing pain

they barely speak.

Their trust, so whole, it humbles me—

but still, I squirm.

I am a fraud.

Not clinically—

my diagnoses sound.

But this knowing—

not born of pain I've lived,

but borrowed.

When did I learn the moment

a wife becomes a nurse,

and her touch

becomes a task?

Or the fear

in a husband’s eyes

when he looks at his wife

and sees a stranger?

Medical school didn't teach me

the terror

of holding your seizing child,

what night work steals from families,

the exhaustion in a mother's eyes

when she says "I'm fine"—and isn't.

I learned from people

living it.

Truckers, new mothers, retirees—

inadvertent professors

of the human condition.

I've watched them

through first pregnancies and late divorces,

sudden unemployment and quiet retirement,

the slow unfolding

of ordinary lives

made extraordinary.

Last month,

families who lost everything to fire.

In the makeshift clinic

they thanked us for the care,

though I had no medicine

for what they'd survived.

Again, they taught me resilience

I cannot prescribe.

When students ask

how I understand so deeply,

I want to confess:

They live the night;

I speak the day.

I only echo

what they've shown.

Their wisdom,

my voice.

Am I conduit

or thief?

When they

thank me for knowing,

I want to say:

This knowing comes from all of you.

I'm just the repository.

The theft continues.

The learning never stops.