I am experienced in empathy.
Not comfort,
For I can easily feel when hugs and tender words will do no good.
They hurt the broken people, don't they?
Make them only more aware of how they should be.
Not sympathy, or pity,
Those burn their victims like acid
Spoon-fed in the guise of tonic
In the semblance of medication.
No, what I am good at is empathy.
I feel
What they feel.
Touch it with my fingertips and learn it like braille.
Like I am blind, reaching out to them.
No matter how close I get, it never impales me like it does them.
I am the watcher without eyes.
But I feel it, understand it, read it,
And so I know
Not what to do or say, really.
Just what not to.
It is a skill that people seem to fly towards and huddle around.
I think not a lot of people must take the time to understand
Pain
When they see it's there.
They barge in with their little toy tools
Plastic hammers and screws,
Elmers glue,
And fix it all with sloppy gobs of paste.
And at the end, looking at their handiwork,
Sagging to one side,
Simply propped up like it will stay stable,
Smile,
Sigh with the satisfaction
Of a job done,
If not well,
And brush their palms together
As if to say,
"Well, that takes care of that."
And whistle merrily on their way,
Even as the poor person they fixed
Must now wash the gaudy decor
From their jagged edges
And start again from the bottom up.
The real truth is that you can't glue a person back together.
You can only tell them that
They are still art
Even though they are no longer
As they once were.
Empathy takes restraint.
Takes patience.
Takes practice.
It is the art of feeling what another feels,
And still acknowledging that you do not fully understand.
It is the subtlety of looking at another person
And never telling but always showing
That they are themselves strong enough
To heal.