Cafe Del Soul

Kindness
By Phoebe Wilcox -- Contributing Poet -- [Email This Item]

Squeezing a drop of blood out of the tip of my finger, it's a ruby smaller than a teardrop. As a child, I never pricked myself to be blood sisters with anyone like that, rubbing grubby fingertips together so unsanitarily. Besides, I never liked pain. I still don't like pain but nowadays I'm blood sisters with it.

Harsh words make gashes in the heart. Harsh words spoken through smiling hypocritical lips make even worse gashes in a heart. There is so much silent bleeding everywhere. I've been rolling out bandages and adhesive tape for so long in these wars of mine. So much of my time is spent checking wound sites and trying to recognize if they're getting better or not, and which soldiers are the ones fighting on my side . . . they all seem to wear the same uniforms and I can't tell one man from another.

Years ago a man with whom I was acquainted took his own life. Small things I remember from the weeks before he died, one, he corrected me after I'd made some disparaging comment about my unruly hair. I had used the word hate. He used the word beautiful.

His last advice to those he left behind was to be kind.

Then he took himself away from the unkind multitude, as far as he could get from us, he went.

he left words like wishful bandages,
to sop up what he left behind.

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