when they say “just a nurse,” something dies in me

Not just a nurse. The body between them and the end.

Poem 49: when they say “just a nurse,” something dies in me
From my series “Where Nurses Go to Grieve Themselves”

They say it like it’s harmless—
like it doesn’t shrink the years I’ve given,
the nights I stayed when I was breaking,
the bodies I’ve held while God looked away.

Just a nurse.
As if I don’t carry death in one hand and hope in the other,
as if I haven’t kept people alive with nothing but instinct
and a whisper that steadied someone’s last breath.

They don’t see the grief I’ve swallowed
just to make room for someone else’s pain,
the blood I’ve cleaned from floors and faces,
the names I still remember long after the beds have been changed.

Every time they say it,
another piece of me goes quiet—
until I’m all silence,
still healing everyone but myself.

---

They call us just nurses while the world builds altars for titles it can pronounce—handing out praise to the visible roles, while we bleed quietly in the background, holding the weight no one claps for.
We are the hands that steady what others initiate, the presence that stays when the hallway's emptied, the ones who feel the change in breath before the monitors catch up.We are the hands they don’t name in press releases, the voices that calm when morphine doesn’t reach far enough, the ones who know what death smells like long before the labs return.

Doctors write the orders, but we hold the line.

Not once. Not sometimes. But always.

And when it gets too heavy, we don’t get rounds of applause—we get bruised backs, skipped lunches, and the kind of exhaustion no chart will ever capture.

This is not about comparison.
This is about correction.
Because when you say “just a nurse,” something dies in me—and I’ve already swallowed enough ghosts for a lifetime.

This one’s for every nurse who became a ghost so someone else could live.

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© 2025 Solena Vyhra. All rights reserved.
This work is part of the poetry collection Where Nurses Go to Grieve 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.