A highly sensitive poem.

Empathy is the metamorphic power that welds the chain to open up the beauty from humanity—many call it by it’s informal name: “weakness”.

Devastatingly, when viewed from the world on perfect day it will be seen as unnecessary.

That same sunny world may hurt you, judge you, use your bodies without an ounce of love while the sky reflects ideal blue.

But, you know that gray clouds inevitably blanket, creating sinister skies—you’ve been there.

You have opened up an umbrella resilient to all the shadows and heavy droplets that seem so dark, and you have developed lenses that offer clear through the fog.

But in the showers you managed to pick flowers from a basket, put bows in your hair, mermaid through the ocean depths of what has become an asset to your life.

You have mastered what’s titled weakness,

placed on it an iridescent crown and managed to lift up your head moving with tears.

The tears that soothe life’s blisters upon the deepest, most wounded part of you: YOU, not president or chairman, or chief.

YOU without a cloth to cover any part—your memories, your people, your losses—YOU.

You’ve bathed in a goodness that blue-sky movers have yet to soak up—as it never served them.

The bafflingly powered fair-weather watchers have chanted on their thrones, pointing: “ weakness.”

...but YOU are deaf to their taunts, for YOU have painted bleeding hearts on your sleeves for them—knowing there is also one beating in their chest.

Your aching, yes aching heart will sense and prepare, because without doubt or fail will fall their monsoon.

When their eventual Titanic storm taps Morse code onto the unprotected part of their life, rendering them unable navigate through crystal or wave.

It will propel them into a sinkhole— 1st class combs, mirrors, achievements and grudges pulling them deeper at their ankles.

They will reach out of the surface and call out with panic by your name they know: “weakness” in nothing but SOS tones.

Not repetitive of the first, your ears will awake to that call because you instinctively know what words matter.

You know it is not money-not-given, people kneeled-on and the tears ignored—because those nightmare visions awakened opposition to injustice recognized in the very center of your cells—at the most simple, good part.

That YOU that hears the call: sharpening your hearing as it draws you more strongly like men to a siren’s call,

The pull, but not harsh, but the embodiment of a saving grace like a new baby that heals a hidden precious hope in the throat once lost at great, grief—life lost.

And you jump across the puddles to once “weak” wailers. They first hold on to their titles—hoping it will float.

Their brains on their last signal will scramble, searching hope as they succumb to what can not be done, alone.

A picture flashing, at the forefront of their minds pixelates and overrides all systems.

It’s a memory of you boldly owning your “weakness”.

It is now a permanent part of you enmeshed and incapable of separation from your being and soul

The sinking with their last breathe allotted for mortality: “weakness”

I does not come out in words, but a rattle on their breath while their vision pinpoints, closing their shutter eyes called: perspective.

Their hands float up, resistant to their sinking body. “Please Help Me” are their song’s lyrics that can’t dance through the air. “I can’t do this alone”

Breaking through their silent melodies you see a hand reaches down and grabs—with all possible brawn—the fingers that won’t reflex, then grasped palm to palm.

It pulls and it slips but YOU grab and won’t let go. “Weakness” that YOU, through your heart, transforms to Strength—and It’s effortless and flawless

Out of the ground depression emerges a changed person, a new person, a YOU person. No longer in suits or shoes or promotions.

YOU no longer recognize what you THOUGHT important.

What now is engraved on their heart and their brain

is YOU.

The YOU that saved YOU, forgave YOU, belayed YOU—to protect you from falling, from hitting rock-bottom.

YOU, whose past in prison did not change the way that you saw him. YOU who offered YOU shoes when your feet were unprotected, YOU who overtips, Calls for justice and feels for another.

YOU who loves YOU who made sense of YOU who realized that glorious Empathy is the “weakness” that keeps us connected.