inspirational, leisure

Rent Free Poem Week 2: Day 5

Posted by Sandhya on

Happy Friday rockstars, 

As those of you who read yesterday’s post know, it’s time for another “Rent Free Poem” Week!

Some of you might remember the first edition back in February 2024 (posts linked at the bottom). That was right before Tay’s TTPD dropped. And funny enough her newest album, Life of a Showgirl, came out today! I guess I’m more aligned with Taylor than I thought… though let’s be real, her productivity is goals.

What is Rent Free Poem Week?

So what is rent free poem week? Every day for a week, I pick a poem that’s been living rent-free in my head since I read it, and I write about it. For this, I have to channel all my 10th-grade English reading comprehension skills, but sadly there are no SparkNotes for these poems. So here is me, taking my shallow take on deep poems and hoping I can half-as-eloquently describe how these beautiful pieces of writing made me feel. 

As I’m on the last day, I just want to thank you all for being here, reading along, and supporting me through this journey!! With that, the last one this week: Week 2; Day 5:

Time is not the only thing that heals by Raquel Franco

Cheesecake heals. Savor a slice with ruby red strawberries on top and lick the plate clean. Let yourself be held tightly and often by arms that will never tire of holding you. Sit at a dinner table where only laughter is served. Step outside and let the buttery light of the sun warm your cheekbones. Drink water, bite into a slice of an orange, add spinach to your pasta you won’t even taste but your body will thank you for. Offer up tiny kindnesses. Send your mother a bouquet of lilies. Leave a tender note on a stranger’s car window. Smile at your neighbors on days that are hard. To love is the ultimate way to heal what’s been broken. Take the gentle hand of grace. Remind yourself there is no right or wrong way to heal. Sometimes you just have to get lost in order to be found.

Healing isn’t always found in grand gestures or ticking of clocks .Sometimes, it’s in the smallest, most boring moments of life. The theme of this week is slowing down — in a world that often celebrates achievement, speed, productivity, and efficiency, it’s easy to overlook the quiet, grounding power of gratitude, and the way that it can pull us through even the hardest seasons. Gratitude to me, is about noticing the things we’re thankful for when we’re in the middle of the storm, as well as when things are going well. Gratitude to me is about choosing joy when joy doesn’t come easily, choosing to be hopeful when our minds are racing to worst case scenario, to finding other coping mechanisms (like eating cheesecake, offering up tiny kindnesses, and sending someone flowers) when all we want to do is break down in tears.

“This too shall pass.” Four simple words that we’ve all heard variations of. Or the famous one from Fleabag that’s even less: “It’ll pass.”

Whenever I rant to one of my good friends Neel, it starts off with me ranting and sending paragraphs of messages one after the other. He naturally listens, asks questions, tells me something comforting, and then calms me down. Then I say something like “I want to fast forward” or “I’m really upset, what do I do?” and he reminds me that this too will pass. Honestly, he’s probably one of the only people who can tell me this and I wouldn’t punch them in the face, so, he’s a lucky one I guess.

But the answer is the same — Time becomes the go-to remedy for grief, heartbreak, loss, disappointment. And while I do agree that time softens the sting of pain, it isn’t a magic wand. It doesn’t erase memories or automatically mend broken hearts. Time alone can’t always help.

I was at this bookstore, Wonderland books, a few months ago with my friend Veda. I love going to bookstores with her because she has the same bookstore energy as me, even though we don’t really read the same books. But we’ll enter, walk around and read back covers of books or sit down and properly start reading, and then find each other again 45 minutes later. I read the back cover of this book called “The Poppy Fields” by Nikki Erlick

I loved Nikki Erlick’s other book, The Measure. There are scenes in that book that live rent free in my head, and it basically changed my entire way of thinking. But The Poppy Fields, is where there is hope for the most battered hearts to heal. There is a remote stretch of the California Desert, where people suffering from the heartache of loss can sleep through their pain and enter a prolonged state of slumber. After they wake up, then they will finally be healed.

This book has been living rent free in my head since I read it a few months ago (but I have yet to read the book). I go back and forth on the concept.

Sometimes I think: “you can’t just sleep away your life, you have to live in it, you have to grow from it, you have to learn lessons, and experience heartache, and sadness, and happiness, and explore all the greatest joys that the world has to offer.”

Other times: “Wow it feels selfish to go to this garden if you have other people who are experiencing the grief with you — people who need your support, people whose support you can rely on, people who don’t want life to pass them by as they’re sleeping.”

And the last thought I have is: “Wow you know what, if I could sleep and then wake up and then magically all my problems and stressors disappeared, then yeah, sign me up!

Naturally I have competing thoughts on this. (Update: my mom just said she got this for me from the library!!)

The thing is, I don’t think Time alone can fix us. What does help, more than time, is laughing even when years still linger on the edges of our hearts, lean into our relationships, into beauty, into small rituals that remind us: “I’m alive, and there is good here.” It’s not about pretending things are okay when they’re not. It’s about giving yourself permission to enjoy a few stolen moments of peace in the middle of chaos.

“Step outside and let the buttery light of the sun warm your cheekbones.”

Nature is the cure (and celestial events). Many of you know that I’m one of those girls who talks to trees. Join me — go outside, stand in the sun, talk to a tree, talk to five! Let the breeze remind you that the world is still turning, and you are still part of it. Remember that even when things are falling apart, this earth is holding you and keeping you afloat.

Sometimes you just have to get lost in order to be found.

As someone who always turns the GPS on when I’m driving, even if I know exactly where to go, I can admit that I’m afraid of getting lost. I’m afraid of not having the answers, of wandering too far from where I once was or want to be, of traveling into unknown territory. But maybe that needs to happen, and maybe that’s the only way real transformation happens.

And that’s a WRAP to my second ever Rent Free Poem Week! In hindsight, I could have (and should have said more) to Day 2, so I may edit that in the future, or issue an addendum. But overall, it was a pretty emotionally and intellectually stimulating week. I hope to do this again soon but many many thanks to all of you for tuning in!

Past Rent-Free Poems: 

Until next time!

xo

Sandhya

If you would like to celebrate my 30th year around the sun with me, then please click the follow or subscribe button! Feel free to connect with me through this platform, twitter, my coffee and checkins Instagram, my podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, or Amazon Music, or email me at coffeeandcheckins@gmail.com! If you have any suggestions for topics or anything you’d like me to write/speak about, please let me know🙂❤

I would love to hear your thoughts!!