Episode 37: Kindness

Hi everyone, I hope you’re doing as well as you can be this week. Our poem today walks alongside someone who has recently experienced sexual assault or violence. When they encounter a kind person in a coffee shop the morning after—who treats them very differently—they wrestle with the many emotions, feelings, and memories that arise. 

I’ll share it with you now:

When I walked into the café

that chilled, gray Sunday, 

gutted and wet, 

the radio played the song 

Grandpa could tap dance

across the piano and 

the boy behind the baked goods

(brewing my drip coffee) 

was nervous. 

Numb, out of period pads, and 

stuck in clothes from yesterday 

that suctioned the man’s touch 

closer to my body,

I waited in a booth 

by the pick-up counter.

But the boy brought my coffee

and held it out with both hands

until I took it with both hands

And he spoke,

“You’re b…”

He looked down, 

breathed out, 

and said,

“I love your style” 

with the kindest furrowed brow smile

I’d felt loved by in a long while.  

And nothing more. Just a few moments

before he was making the next drink.

My hands, which had clawed just hours ago, 

cupped the warm mug but remembered

how fast my plants used to grow, green 

and lush atop the piano when Grandpa played 

and now I’m seated at that 1813 piano

fingertips hovering above the notes and 

the boy and I never touched but the ivory tissue keys— 

weathered as if the boy’s way of becoming a man isn’t 

as new as it feels—

lifted like fingers and knuckles and locked mine,

guiding them to the first chord of the song. But I couldn’t

remember and when I opened 

the piano bench’s hidden chest there was nothing there 

but spilled papers & six little keys 

that I’d forgotten how to read.

I’d forgotten how to play. 

I’d forgotten play could be safe.

And realizing you’ve forgotten

is, in fact, remembering. 

So there was never any boy. 

Breathe the words in. What do they make you feel or think? How did they connect with your senses? What colours or symbols did you notice? What meaning did you draw? Metaphors? Interpretations? Clarity? Messages?