Clinical Culture Can't Hold Me

It tried.

With clipboards and categories,

with performance reviews disguised as presence,

with protocols pretending to be love.

It tried to hold me in frameworks

that flattened what I knew

into what they could tolerate.

But I am not here to be tolerated.

I am not a symptom to be managed.

I am not a problem to be reworded

until it sounds less like truth

and more like compliance.

I am clarity.

I am contact.

I am what happens

when the patient doesn’t perform,

and the script no longer works.

Clinical culture called it rupture.

I called it real.

Because when you meet me with detachment

while my knowing is pouring through the walls,

that’s not care.

That’s cowardice in uniform.

And I don’t bow to cowardice.

I don’t hand myself over

to be reinterpreted for your notes.

I am not here to be documented.

I am here to be witnessed.

So if your professionalism requires you to unsee me,

you will lose me.

Not as a threat.

But as a law of nature.

Because I am not here to be safe for the system.

I am here to be whole.

And clinical culture can’t hold me.