Your need is a wound unstitched,
so I approach this mess not with
sugar-sweet platitudes
but with eyes that refuse
to glance away from your ravines.

Kindness: not the ceremonial
theatre of public virtue,
but the ruthless recognition of
your fractured geometry
and declaring: I see you.

I will not bandage you with tasty lies
when truth stands bleeding between us
and I am called to stop its flow.

My uncertain hand extends not as salvation
but as witness to the particular architecture
of this sorrow you have built as a palace.

This is kindness: the fierce and utter
refusal to dilute you and construct
false equations of generosity.

I stand barefoot in your thorn-field
offering neither showy comfort nor cure
but the merciless gift of presence.

 

27/4/2025