THE CLOSEST I EVER FELT TO GOD

THE CLOSEST I EVER FELT TO GOD

By Farah Lawal Harris, 2025

Sitting at home alone during chemo was the closest I ever felt to God.

Away from the noise of achievement and expectations,

the groans of pushing and striving,

and the ever-exhausting sighs from -isms,

I was free to just sit, heal, and listen.

The birds began to speak to me frequently.

Before sunrise, the family in the nest

a few feet from my bedroom window

would squeak, “Grand rising.”

Minutes after the radiologist called to inform me that

cancer made a new home in my lymph nodes,

my back yard filled with baby blue birds,

an army of angels singing

“Every little thing will not only be alright,

but amazing.”

I began to study the birds—

how they stayed in community

chatting each day;

how they banded together

to scare feral cats away,

how in my saddest moments, they came—

an army of soldiers, chanting:

“If we can fight, so can you.

Don’t you know we hurt, too?

We lose friends to early deaths, too.

Our lives are under threat, too.

Just as God knows all our feathers,

God knows your cells, too.

We sing because the next moment

is not guaranteed.

Why not create beauty?”

The birds ain’t never lied.

—

Written for National Poetry Writing Month, 2025