Family Medicine

Stories arrive before the body speaks.
The same faces return, yet never the same story.

I pause,
I listen,
I consider.

Names gather weight over time.
Not strangers,
but lives unfolding in chapters
I’ve been privileged to witness.

Trust builds in repetition,
a quiet, steady presence.

We hold each problem between us,
not passed along,
but shared.

She tells me the same story again,
this time forgetting she already has,
and I listen
as if it were the first.

I give a little,
learn a little.

And still, it is enough.

Here, medicine breathes,
alive in small rooms,
in returning visits,
in the quiet work of staying.