Kindness

Living in the City

          I’m twenty-seven now. I live in a small simply furnished one bedroom apartment with my cat Love and my dog Yu in New York. I’m a photographer and writer. I work for an upcoming company writing short poems and taking seasonal pictures. My work is printed in birthday cards or sometimes on the back of the local newspaper.

     My colleagues don’t like me enough to want to talk to me. They don’t think the work I do is important. I see them pass my cubicle to get some coffee in the kitchen. They don’t even smile out of kindness, just pass my desk, to the kitchen, pour the coffee, and then back past my desk. Once I waited in the kitchen, coffee in hand, and optimistic smile on my face.

       “Hey Rick, how’s your day going?” I inquired. “I just finished my third poem today. I think you’ll like the…”

        “Hey Ruth, not now please. Not everyone sits at their desks writing useless poetry. Some of us actually have to do real work around here.”

        “Oh Okay.” I said out of kindness. “H-have a good day then.”

     “I can’t understand how you still have a job. They’ll probably discontinue your work section anyway.” He laughed. “Maybe it’s that body that they really like.”

        He walked out without a second glance with that damn coffee in his hand. I poured my coffee down the drain, went back to my cubicle, and threw all three poems in the trash. I wrote a new one about coffee.

                                                                     Black and bitter

                                                                  It burns my throat

                                                                    Tart is its taste

                                                              Coffee is a damn waste

           I crumpled it up and threw it into the wastebasket with the others. Then the tears fell again. All over my desk causing ink blotches to taint the pages beneath me. I couldn’t help myself, the disease and the chaos took over, and soon I was hunched over my desk heaving silently into the crook of my arm. When it was lunchtime I went home, watched television with Love and Yu,and no one even cared I was gone.

            When I got my paycheck I noticed they docked my pay for that day.

                                                          2Surely God is my salvation;

                                                          I will trust and not be afraid.

                                          The Lord, the Lord, is my strength and my song;

                                                          he has become my salvation.

                                                                    (Isaiah 12:2 NIV)