it’s understood you won’t get 
everything you ever wanted 
it’s true you’re still the flower 
of someone’s eye 

there’s maybe room for life 
to grant you more wishes 
you don’t have to feel 
so haunted while alive

when you see yourself 
in someone else 
when you find something
to agree upon 

when you ask  
for a little help 
in the face of 
a new situation 

feel a crack in the armor 
that turns into a smile 
might remember that amour 
you felt as a child 

there it is dusty
in the back of your mind
that discarded notion
how to be kind 

as you face another evening
as someone’s invented 
a billion new ways 
to be lonely

as there are compelling 
new arguments to be made 
about cruelty 
and those to despise

I hope you go another 
way and remember 
those old and naïve
and discredited 

sages of another time 
and never relent 
and always be inventing
new ways to be kind