In partnership with Girls Write Now, Channel Kindness held a poetry contest entitled “Art of Kindness.” Below is an excerpt of one of the contest’s honorable mentions, a poem written by Grace Yu. You can read the entire poem on the Girls Write Now website.
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You do not expect
the kindness. It comes
in splashes, like an outpour
after a long drought. It was
Tuesday, and raining.
It often was. That night,
the sidewalks were leaping —
Manhattan’s scrubbed grass,
dry and parched, had found
space to breathe quietly
in the wet dirt. That night,
I inhaled the dampness,
the scent of petrichor, the mud
seeping into my thin shoes and
the rain dripping through
my soaked hood. I shivered
slowly under the dark, passing through
the windows of department stores,
lightheaded, wandering through
an array of bread, a stack
of thick winter coats. That night,
Read the full poem on the Girls Write Now site.