My Sympathy

my sympathies aren’t born of grace like in the way of the benevolent heiress who, ever-so-delicately, extends cupped hands to feed the twittering songbirds perched on her windowsill it comes from a far more wretched place, emerging so unsightly, it almost contradicts the inherent virtue of the word because it isn’t fueled by love or fortune, but by every instance unaccounted for in which i should’ve felt the same pity for myself my sympathy is abundant and involuntary as though in response to constant overflow and extends much further than hungry birds or grieving friends it reaches all the way out to lone, discarded cans that didn’t quite make it to the trash bin, and to the virtual strangers that walk past, their defeats and quandaries overheard, and to every unfortunate soul between, under the sole condition that they don’t share a brain with me