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Published: Feb. 3, 2024, 12:35 a.m.

Small Kindnesses\xa0

Danusha Lam\xe9ris

I\u2019ve been thinking about the way, when you walk
down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs
to let you by. Or how strangers still say \u201cbless you\u201d
when someone sneezes, a leftover
from the Bubonic plague. \u201cDon\u2019t die,\u201d we are saying.
And sometimes, when you spill lemons
from your grocery bag, someone else will help you
pick them up. Mostly, we don\u2019t want to harm each other.
We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,
and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile
at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress
to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder,
and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.
We have so little of each other, now. So far
from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange.
What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these
fleeting temples we make together when we say, \u201cHere,
have my seat,\u201d \u201cGo ahead\u2014you first,\u201d \u201cI like your hat.\u201d

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From\xa0Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness and Connection\xa0(Green Writers Press, 2019). Posted by kind permission of the\xa0poet.

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Small Kindnesses grateful.org "Am I then really all that which other men tell of, or am I only what I know of myself, restless and longing and sick, like a bird in a cage, struggling for breath, as though hands were compressing my throat, yearning for colors, for flowers, for the voices of birds, thirsting for words of kindness, for neighborliness,\u201d Dietrich Bonhoeffer, "Who Am I." \xa0 Welcome to RandomActsofKindness.org randomactsofkindness.org 2024_RAK_kindness_calendar PDF Document \xb7 8.5 MB