The streets in Japan are narrow.

There is the smell of soy and earth, incense and mossy fingers wrapped between concrete. There are sidewalk gardens tended with delicate hands, a whispered push of broom against brick. The flutter of an open door resisting the wind.

I used to live here.

I used to know these smells and sounds, as I navigated this new place alone, far from the embrace of home. I let these smells and sounds hold me up when my 19 year old worry pulled me to the ground. Let them hold me up when the panic attacks came. When the rise of anxiety consumed my body like a wave, drowning my eyes with the salty burn of fear.

And I wondered if 25 years later the storm would still be there, waiting for me. Like a page left unturned in a story never finished.

I wondered if the door once closed would open again.

I can’t remember his name. But I remember his eyes.

Swollen as the rain ran down the side of the window in the train station. His eyes, held up inside a map of wrinkles that would take me places his heart couldn’t forget.

He leaned over his cane and reached for his wife’s hand. His eyes tipped as he came close and whispered.

My best friend lives in America.

He balanced on the soft, wooden handle as his body swayed between words.

We’ve been writing to each other every day for the past 40 years.

The sky stilled, clouds perched atop each word.

Every day.

For the past 40 years.

And I thought of each word, stroked under lamplight. Pressed between warm fingers. Stories from a day, a week, a moment remembered and set free. A tiny seed buried inside the ground nurturing the soil with its kindness, keeping his heart alive.

Sometimes kindness is a closed door. A place we forgot to look.

A vulnerability worth opening. And somewhere behind that closed door is a heart waiting to be seen. A heart waiting for the swell to soften and unfold, the salty eyes of hope waiting for its return.

Will you see me?

Will you see it all?

Kindness is a closed eye offering.

A door between vulnerability and courage waiting for us to step through.

A place of red skin rawness, shy of the open hand receipt.

A story told over and over again until it’s written behind our eyes, until it becomes the filter by which we see the world in front of us.

I see you.

I see.

All of you.

Turn the knob.

And sometimes I have to listen real hard. Drown out the beating of my own heart and step through the door knowing it may be too heavy to hold alone.

Because these doors have locks and there are keys gone missing for a lifetime.

Sometimes more.

And I thought there would always be time.

Time to find my way between the doors again.

Time to find my way between vulnerability and courage.

Find my way to this place where kindness holds you in its warmth.

So I hold on. I let go.

I step through and over and above.

What happens to a heart held inside the eyes of kindness?

And sometimes there is just a blank page.

The invisible ink hiding what needs to be seen.

And all we can do is rub our fingers across the page and feel for the place where the pen found the words, where it left its hard pressed story there for us to feel.

And it is there, in the winds rhythmic hymn.

The stream of incense pointing its smoky fingers towards the sky.

Questions answered with one gentle push.

Kindness finds you when the door is open.

Listen for its soft voice, whispering.

We arrived just as the rain began to fall.

Fog covered the mountains and slunk between the fields.

We stared down at the map thick with Japanese letters, lost in a sea of unknowns. A trickle of fear knocked as my heart raced.

She found us.

Her head tilted with concern.

Can I help you?

Can I help you find your way?

And it was her kindness, perched high above us with no words to translate.

Her kindness, unnamed, held us there.

Yes.

Please.

Don’t let go.

And her eyes. And the way she smiled just then. Like the morning sun just as it makes its way over the horizon for the first time.

Her finger found a blue line on the map caught between the crease.

This one.

This one will take you home.

Yes.

Please

Don’t let go.

There is no mark for love. Just as there is no mark for fear.

Just the invitation pushed under the door.

Waiting for you to open it.

And there is the temptation to push it back under the door. To give it back to the shadow that hides it.

Because fear takes residence.

Closes doors and throws locks into deep seas of shame.

Fear whispers,

Don’t trust.

Kindness is not real.

But it is kindness that frees us from hesitation.

Frees us from the roundabout wither of trust.

Heals us from the other side.

From the place where the door has stayed closed for too long.

And how many times have I held kindness at a distance, far enough away to watch it, observe it without ever fully knowing it.

And how many ways do these acts of kindness, these unseen swirls of the heart go unnoticed, unspoken. Never added to the horizon of worry and faltering trust.

Can I help you?

Yes.

Please.

Don't let go.

This one will take you home.

Because kindness is never lost. It waits on the wind.

Brought home by the lift of tears inside your eyes.

Kindness whispers,

There is nothing to fear.

Step through the door.

And don’t look back.

My swelling heart sees your swelling heart.

There is a voice behind the door.

And the sound of feet.

An invitation slid between shadows, pushed underneath by the girl I used to be. And the hand on the other side, still touching the wood, slowly finding the veins of time, the open knots of change, still wounded.

The shadowy outline of pause.

Will you see me?

Will you see all of me?

And the sound of the knob as fingers hold on.

And the turn, as the sun find its way across the cold floor.

The door swings open.

The voice whispers.

I see.