Her Eyes Told Me What the Chart Refused To
She smiled so I wouldn’t ask what she couldn’t survive saying
There are things you see as a nurse that you never get to write down. Not because they’re not real— but because the system doesn’t have a place for them.
No checkbox for “eyes begged me not to leave.”
No dropdown for “soul already leaving the body.”
No tab for “patient smiled to protect me from her fear.”
This poem is about one of those moments. But really, it’s about all of them. It’s about how I was trained to assess vital signs,
but never trained to bear witness to the moment someone silently gave up. To that flicker in the eyes when the body still looks fine
but the spirit has already started to fall away. To the guilt of charting “resting comfortably” when I knew damn well she was dying on the inside.
I wrote this for her, yes. But I also wrote it for me. Because that night I went home and stared at the wall and felt like a fraud— a nurse who knew something deeper was breaking, and still wrote the lie the protocol required.
I wrote this for the version of me who stood quietly at the end of her bed, holding space when I wasn’t allowed to hold her hand. I wrote this for every nurse who has ever mourned something
we weren’t allowed to name. Not the death. But the moment before—
when we watched someone slip and had to pretend we didn’t feel it.
This poem is where I finally let myself say:
I saw you.
I felt you.
I remember.
Even if the chart never will.
Poem 34: Her Eyes Told Me What the Chart Refused To
Series: Where Nurses Go To Mourn Themselves
Section II: where the blood goes
The numbers were perfect—
BP steady, oxygen fine, pain score low—
but when I looked at her,
I saw something breaking
that no monitor would ever catch.
She smiled like she was trying to save me.
Like she knew I wouldn’t believe her if she said it out loud,
so she said nothing,
and let her eyes carry the weight.
It was all there—
the grief, the terror, the quiet surrender,
that silent kind of please don’t leave
that lives behind the pupil
when the mouth stays polite.
I charted “patient resting comfortably”
because that’s what the protocol asked of me.
But inside, I screamed—
because her body was fine,
and her soul was shattering.
🖋 Copyright Notice:
© 2025 Solena Vyhra. All rights reserved.
This work is part of the poetry collection Where Nurses Go to Mourn Themselves.
No part of this poem, including text or visual design, may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission from the author.
For inquiries, permissions, or collaborations, please contact: solenavyhra@gmail.com
Illustration and layout by Solena Vyhra.
Typography: Special Elite (poem titles), Signature (author tag).
Published on Substack via Where Silence Becomes Ritual.
This isn’t just writing. This is witnessing.
Respect the ink. Respect the grief.
I can’t shake this one.
You wrote what medicine can’t chart—what the body knows before the mind catches up.
Her eyes weren’t data points. They were universes full of unspoken truth.
I felt it in my chest—like a door unlatching somewhere I didn’t know was locked.
You named the moment that most of us stumble through in silence.
Thank you for being brave enough to write it—and gentle enough to stay with it.
Sometimes, having the ability to identify someone else's suffering is as painful as being the one with pain. Not knowing how to help or not having the tools to do it always breaks my heart. I really loved this poem, it made me think that no matter how many times people tells us they are fine, we know deep inside it's just a way to avoid what they are really feeling.