A Cruel Kindness
By John Herlihy

I was once the recipient of a cruel kindness,
A false act of giving with a sense of blindness.
A thoughtless person reaching out as if to care,
While I only ended up feeling the worse for wear.

It happened on a day that arose like any other,
As one day has a way of blending into another.
I peer into a peephole to see it in sharp relief,
The moment lasts an eternity but is rather brief.

Kindness can be as touching as a tender hand;
Unkindness can be as cruel as an insult planned.
But a cruel kindness gives way to simple sorrow,
Bringing with it a gift that reveals itself as hollow.

Children can often be cruel and so can the sea;
They are what they are and will be what will be.
Cruelty can rise like the tide and then quietly recede,
A false virtue designed to help but may only impede.

Living with a secret can sometimes be considered hard,
A secret so weary and old you end up feeling scarred.
If the secret be revealed there would be shame in telling,
A lingering wound that now worsens with swelling.

My good friend ended up committing a cruel kindness,
Revealing a secret that arose out of simple blindness.
In good faith, he thought he conveyed a sharing intimacy;
Instead, in truth, he ended up betraying a shared secrecy.

I could not get over this fatal flaw in him and I never will;
The secret no longer exists; the betrayal I remember still.