WFMJ: San Diego

Call Kindness an Anti-currency

Call kindness sweat or carbon dioxide
expelled. The essence of exchange

between organisms. A natural resource
that can’t be stockpiled or charged interest.

Call it a setting free, not a paying.
Call it rhythm. To flow rather than forge.

A word unsaid. An action delayed.
Call it renewable. Accepting it is anti-sin

for it is a current called to work its work
through and through—and through you.

And as all things held too long become weight,
kindness won’t require your hands

or handsomeness or donations.
It requires no self-deprecation

or peacekeepers armed to the teeth
atop green tanks. It is the tree left uncut.

The cell not yet turned against the body.
The opposite of the not quite white flag

you wave anxiously from your perch
in the first world. Why not become

conduit or watershed? You too
are soft-wired synapse of sky.

Your life is the mouth of a river
that provides and doesn’t stop moving

not for commandments or lawmen,
or executive orders, or grief. It is prayer

beneath this rubble.
The ounce of mercy.

Performed by the author, Amanda Fuller, on September 4th at the WFMJ reading in San Diego.