While the Gown Wasn’t Mine

The gown didn’t belong to me.

It never does.

***

It ties you into someone else’s rules,

someone else’s timing,

someone else’s decisions.

***

They tell you to lie still.

They tell you to wait.

They tell you nothing else.

***

So I did what my hands remembered.

***

I drew.

***

Not because I was brave.

Not because I was hopeful.

But because when your body is no longer yours,

your hands look for something small they can still control.

***

The line wasn’t straight.

The paper wasn’t special.

The drawings weren’t impressive.

***

They didn’t need to be.

***

They were proof that I was still here

while everything important happened outside my reach.

***

Hospitals are strange like that.

Your name becomes a chart.

Your time becomes a number.

Your future becomes a conversation held somewhere you can’t hear.

***

And you learn quickly

that waiting is not passive.

It’s exhausting.

***

So you fill it with something harmless.

Something quiet.

Something that doesn’t ask permission.

***

I didn’t draw to escape.

I drew to stay.

***

To anchor myself in a moment where nothing could be fixed,

but something could still be made.

***

The needle stayed in my hand.

The bed stayed cold.

The ceiling didn’t change.

***

But for a few minutes,

I wasn’t just a body being managed.

***

I was someone choosing a line.

Someone deciding a shape.

Someone reminding himself that even here,

even now,

he could still create instead of disappear.

***

People think strength looks loud.

They think it looks like endurance.

***

Sometimes it looks like a quiet sketch

made while life is paused

and all you are allowed to do

is wait.

*******

This piece was written from a moment of waiting, not crisis. Sometimes the hardest part isn’t pain, but the loss of agency. The act of drawing wasn’t meant to be meaningful. It just happened. And maybe that’s the point. When life pauses us, we instinctively reach for something that reminds us we’re still here.