To hold even the one whose hands
are stained,
to look them in the face as a claim
and not look away,
is to refuse with courage the eye for an eye
and to see the criminal, the outcast,
the troubled,
and the man asleep beneath the bridge
as the same brittle person,
and offer instead with trembling hands, unsure,
a radical dignity and care,
a scandal of grace,
not as reward, not as pardon, not as posturing,
not condition to be met,
but as the last soft light
we keep from going out,
for revenge is only the mirror we
smash so we
don’t see our own face in it,
and turning away to abandonment
is never to see in their eyes
the remnants of abuse and shame,
the histories untold and unheard,
while care, radical and unearned,
this a boundless compassion, Karuna,
found from a deep well,
is the heavy creaking door we leave
a little open in a house
we swore we’d bolt against the dark—
and the dark comes anyway, always,
comes after the warming sun,
but so does the guest, the stranger,
and we set,
without flinching,
one more seat at the table.

 

19/7/2026