for Thomas

You know that moment

when the drug hits the neurons in your brain

and you register that, finally, blissfully, the pain

has gone,

and freedom fills the space left empty by its previous persistence,

horizons open upon the place narrowed to a pinpoint by the pain

and breath returns and you count them

one

two, three

until you forget to keep counting them again?

That is what the kindness of compassion does,

that same relief, release

of breath and intermingled grace.

And gratitude gushes forth like life,

an upside-down waterfall,

bursting up from the bottom of the belly,

coursing through my veins,

a cleanse

of all the hurts and heartache, a glimpse of hope again.

And such gratitude is its own exquisite pain:

it hurts, somehow, because it cannot be contained

within the fragile epidermis of our human frame.

And so it breaks out of the prison of my skin,

in tears of thanksgiving,

both eucharist and libation,

an offering to the God of goodness whose compassion,

cruciform,

is the model for the kindness that made it all begin.

Here is God’s spirit,

incarnate in conversation, connection

or a kindred kiss;

Here is kindness offered, received and given again

in gratitude

a circle of communion unbroken

through time and space,

an antidote to evil

and the sacrament of grace.