My grandfather,

Surgeon, soldier, artist,

Horsehair paint brush held like a scalpel in his gnarled hand,

Once said,

“Medicine is art. Art is different for all artists.

When you find your art, you should feel…”

His milky eyes danced across large meters of yellow parchment,

Dappled in the sunlight, wrinkled by stone ink from the Yunnan mountains.

Spanning entire walls,

His art is all encompassing, surrounding, breathtaking.

Yet, what has always been most beautiful to me,

Was never the big picture of traditional Chinese landscapes,

From twenty feet away.

Rather, the minute intricacies standing close,

Nose touching the parchment,

The singular stroke denoting a flying bird,

The whisper of sunset in the corner of the scroll.

My grandfather, Yeye, and I are one and the same,

Healers, artists, in our own way.

But I feel,

That looking closer,

Much closer,

Often evokes more emotion.

Microscopic galleries of living dead artifacts lay,

Frozen in time,

Sectioned to perfection,

So that I may know you.

Heavily mitotic figures dance erratically,

Among tissues that crave sleep.

Patches of death glow pretty and pink surrounded,

By a palace worth of palisades.

An ecology of species, worthy of its own safari,

“There we see the brightness of the eosinophils,

And there seems to be a large herd of them,

It must be allergy season…”

Echoes of Picasso, Monet in every design,

Where every individual is one of a kind,

Where the privilege of perception is truly divine.

Cellular symphonies,

Sing your body’s battles.

And so when I bear witness,

To that which I cannot outright see,

I feel.

I whisper this to him,

“I’ve found it Yeye,

The beauty you told me to seek…”

He looks at me blankly,

Hands having forgotten the shape of brush or scalpel,

Only capable of holding mine,

Willing me to be his eyes.

Willing me to carry on,

Seeing, appreciating, healing.