The Kindly Stranger

I dropped my coins at the bus stop

Like my hands forgot how to be hands.

They scattered

little silver panics

into the gutter water.

﹁﹂

I was already having a day,

You know the kind,

where your throat feels tight

for no obvious reason

And everything is too loud.

﹁﹂

I knelt down anyway,

hair in my face,

trying to pick up dignity

with wet fingers.

﹁﹂

A stranger crouched beside me

without asking for my story.

No “are you okay?”

That makes you lie.

﹁﹂

Just hands,

quick and careful,

gathering the runaway coins

like they mattered.

Like I mattered.

﹁﹂

He gave them back

warm from his palm

and smiled once

small, not flirtatious,

just human.

﹁﹂

I wanted to cry right there

over twenty-seven cents

and a moment of kindness

I didn’t earn.

﹁﹂

The bus came.

We didn’t talk again.

He walked the other way,

and I carried that softness

home like a secret.

﹁﹂

Maybe the world isn’t all sharp edges.

Maybe I just forget

until someone proves it

in the smallest, stupidest way.