Empty Vessel

My friend Lisa is a creative genius - she takes fabric, wool, and scraps of lace and creates joy-filled, whimsical birds, butterflies, and lately, tea cups.

The tea cups arose from a mutual conversation we'd had with a friend. It was a week in which fatigue had returned, and I was mourning the loss of energy and health - the ebb and flow of my days. Our friend Carol remarked that 'sometimes we're a tea cup and sometimes we're a thimble' and this image struck me with its poignancy, as it resonated so accurately with my experience.

Oh yes. Sometimes we have a thimble full of energy when we wish we had a tea cup full. Sometimes we have a cup full but think we have a thimble.

The image moved Lisa and she made these tea cup and thimble pairings.

As Lisa shared her teacups with me, she invited me to write something to pair with them for a fundraiser for a mental health charitable organization. So Carol's words and Lisa's invitation became this poem. Truly, we wrote her together.

Empty Vessel by Karly Randolph Pitman

with thanks to Carol Ames for the image and Lisa Barker for the prompt

A thimble can hold a teaspoon of water,
a pitcher, a gallon. A tea cup, somewhere
in between. Our hearts were made
to be capacious – to stretch and hold
and feel. But the body has her limits,
as does a day, as does time. Sometimes
I confuse my body with my heart, forget
which one I live in. My heart easily says
yes, and yes – yearning to play, or to give,
or to belong. But it's the body that holds
the measure of my capacity, how much
I pour in, what pours out. Slowly, slowly
I'm learning: there's as much love
in a thimble as a teacup, as a lake, as a sea.
The amount of water or size of the container
isn't the question. It's what vessel my body carries
easily today, aloft on the heft of my shoulder –
the water I pour out to quench another's thirst, and mine.

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With a grateful heart, Karly