Kindness poem

Naomi Shihab Nye, 1952

Before you know what kindness really is

you must lose things,

feel the future dissolve in a moment

like salt in a weakened broth.

What you held in your hand,

what you counted and carefully saved,

all this must go so you know

how desolate the landscape can be

between the regions of kindness.

How you ride and ride

thinking the bus will never stop,

the passengers eating maize and chicken

will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness

you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho

lies dead by the side of the road.

You must see how this could be you,

how he too was someone

who journeyed through the night with plans

and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,

you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.

You must wake up with sorrow.

You must speak to it till your voice

catches the thread of all sorrows

and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,

only kindness that ties your shoes

and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,

only kindness that raises its head

from the crowd of the world to say

It is I you have been looking for,

and then goes with you everywhere

like a shadow or a friend.

I’m laying stretched out across my old lumpy couch. My thick purple blanket is haphazardly tossed over my body, and Billie, my 11 month old kitten is stretched across my midsection with her tail towards my face.

I shift my body slightly, and a sharp, blinding white pain hits me. Immediately, I yawp. Billie leaps from my lap and scampers away.

After propping up my back with a floor pillow and ever-so-gingerly placing my left foot on a pile of throw pillows, I close my eyes and take a deep breath. I go through this four-eight-breath thing where I breathe in and count to four. Hold the breath for four. Release the breath slowly as I count to eight.

It’s not about the counting for me, but I use the rhythm of the count to connect with my breath. I do this the same way I connect with a song that I’m about to sing. I count the beat out at the beginning until it becomes so natural I become lost in it. State of flow, so to speak.

But in this moment, the pain is so sudden and intense, I cling to counting breath like a life raft. Fill my chest, then my abdomen… three, four. Hold breath, two, three, four. Reeeeeleeeeaaassssee…and in the release I concentrate on freeing my spine and lungs of muscle tension and tightness. I repeat this as I wait for meds to kick in and dull this reality I don’t want to accept.