He has a heart,
and arms and legs and toes just like anyone else,
but clings to distinctives in himself and others
because no two persons are the same.

He wants not to be known but to be known by love,
by care and compassion and grace and patience and heart,
because with no heart there is no humanity
and with no humanity no life.

He learned as a child that to care was to err
because feelings were lies one told oneself,
the temptations of the flesh, not the virtues of the mind,
and to think was to be, to rationalize to see.

But he wills himself now to bleed empathy,
to breathe it deep in, breathe it deep out,
because in spite of his past he knows
the ones he loves deserve to know
how much caring he really does.