this weekend
I went to the sunflower patch
swinging arms with my mom and sister
starry eyed at the fields of bright gold yellow
nestled in the blue of the mountains around us.
it is the one time a year I am home
a fleeting break between the long hours
of rotation after rotation.
sometimes it feels that it is only here
that I can truly feel the sun shine on the earth around me.
my heart smiles every time I am in the heart of the Blue Ridge.
we walked through rows
and rows of blooms
the flowers were as tall as we were
facing away from the slowly setting sun,
ready for it to rise again
the mountains beyond the sunflowers are a muted blue grey today
the thousands of hours that yielded thousands of silky gold petals
I could only think of the hands that dug the soil and planted the seeds
to allow for growth towards the sun
I wondered, just then, in the shadows of the towering heliotropes
when exactly it was
that I stopped turning towards sunshine too.
the golden beams emanated on our faces
as evening fell and emptied the last rays of sun.
I looked down at my mother’s hands, faithfully intertwined with mine
and all at once
I understood
the hours it must have taken
to remind me to face the sun
Image courtesy of Nima Trivedi.
WiTTY Wednesdays is an initiative showcasing the works of our Writers-in-Training Program writing interns. WiT is a year-long internship for budding medical student writers. Our interns receive intensive, one-on-one mentoring from our medical student program directors and publish at least 3 pieces during the course of their internship. If you are interested in learning more about the program, please contact us at editorinchief@in-training.org.
Poetry Thursdays is an initiative that highlights poems by medical students. If you are interested in contributing or would like to learn more, please contact our editors.
Writers-in-Training Intern and Contributing Writer
Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine
Nima is a medical student at Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine in Bradenton, Florida, Class of 2024. In 2019, she graduated from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University with a Bachelor of Science in neuroscience and biology, with minors in creative writing and medicine and society. Nima enjoys gardening, cooking, and painting in her free time. After graduating medical school, Nima would like to pursue a career in family medicine with a focus on community health and lifestyle medicine.