sometimes the only thing standing between someone else, and the version of their life that’s ends here….is YOU…🌷🤍 #poetrytok #spokenpoetry #poetry

You're raiding on the checkout line in the woman in front of you is counting coins in her hand like if she gets the number wrong something worse than being broke will happen. Her hands are shaking and her cheeks blush. I can tell she's anxious about the people in line behind her. The cashier's size in the world keeps reminding her that she's taking up too much time, too much space, too much air. She starts apologizing before anyone says anything. Her voice cracks like it's already given up on being heard. You don't know that this morning she sat on the edge of her bed and tried to convince herself there was still a reason to keep going. You don't know that she lost her job last week and that rent is due and that she's already packed a bag just in case she needs to leave before someone tells her to. All you see is a girl who can't count her change fast enough, so you step forward. It's okay you say like it actually is. You slide a few dollars onto the counter and she looks at you surprised like kindness is not something she's used to receiving. Are you sure she asks and you nod already reaching for your coffee already moving on with your life? You will forget this by the time you drink cools but she won't. A girl sits in a lecture hall staring at a blank page while everyone else writes. She's already decided she's going to drop out. Eileen over in whisper this class is killing me too. She laughs just enough to feel us alone and failing. She stays enrolled and graduates with a master's in English. A girl tries on a dress in a fitting room on her bed lighting and worst thoughts. She's already decided she doesn't deserve to look good in it. You walk past her and tell her that color was made for her. She buys it, wears it to something. She didn't believe she was beautiful enough to attend. She almost turns the car around twice on the way there, sits in the parking lot where her sea reasons to leave before anyone can see her. But she doesn't, because somewhere in her head she can hear your voice saying that color was made for you. So she walks in and no one stops to stare, no one laughs and no one tells her she doesn't belong. Someone tells her she looks nice, someone asks her name. And weeks later she starts saying yes to things again. Months later she stops apologizing for existing in rooms she once thought she was in beautiful enough to be in. Years later she doesn't remember the outfit or the lighting or the mirror that almost convinced her to go home. But she remembers that someone saw her before she knew how to see herself. And you, you will never know that a sentence you didn't think twice about became the voice she started replacing her own with. You will never know how many lives you've changed just by being a part of theirs. How many people are standing on edges that don't look like edges at all? Check out lines, lecture halls, fitting rooms, and you walk through them like it's just another day. A few dollars of sentence, a kind gesture. You call them small things because they're easy for you, because they cost you nothing, because you don't stay long enough to see what they become. But small things don't make people stay. Small things don't sit in the back of someone's mind for years. Small things don't change the way people view themselves. Kindness isn't small. It is the difference between trying again and giving up, between staying another day or not waking up in the morning. Sometimes the only thing standing between someone else and the version of their life that ends here is you. So be kind, not because it's easy, but because somewhere someone is deciding if they should stay. And you, without even knowing, could be the reason that they do.