The speaker opens by using allusion that resonates with readers' negative emotions, such as fear and hopelessness: "A laboratory in Wuhan." This, of course, refers to the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, which swept the globe in 2020, creating worldwide medical and economic pains. Yet the speaker says that "it" did not begin in this lab but that "it" lay dormant within us, "like a seed" which needed just the right conditions to grow. This simile is not a reminder of the death and devastation of COVID-19 but instead an image of life and hope, the possibilities which are contained in small places but hold nearly unlimited potential. Readers must return to the title of the poem to locate the pronoun antecedent here: kindness.

The speaker juxtaposes the allusion to COVID-19 with emotions of human kindness: "Tear drops, sudden laughter, a feeling of warmth, / and a particular uplifting of the heart." This is not the expected outcome of a disease which is responsible for the destruction of life, and it is this juxtaposition which is jarring enough to the reader to create much-needed introspection. The "heart" here is an example of metonymy, which is when an idea is represented by something closely associated with it. Here, the speaker doesn't actually mean the heart organ was uplifted but instead refers to the human spirit, which has unlimited capacity for hope despite life's circumstances.

Also notice the alliteration at the beginning of the fourth stanza:

Or a certain softness of tone spoken beside.

The repetition of the s sound here mimics the whispers in a hospital room. This is a tone of compassion which "affects young and old equally." This is again an allusion to COVID-19, which predominately affects the elderly with the greatest impacts. Kindness, however, isn't reserved for any particular age group, and its effects can therefore "leave its traces everywhere."

The speed of the poem is slowed down by enjambment and by caesura. Only five lines in the entire poem lack punctuation at the end of the line, and almost every line also contains a colon, comma, or semicolon within the line itself. This creates a sense of intentionality that mimics the message of the poem: it is important to slow down and to pay attention. Kindness is not spread, after all, by rushing through life's metaphorical stanzas. Instead, it is offered intentionally in the small moments of life—in our "conversations over fences" and "from a smile across a street"—where we all have the power to spread hope and warmth, even in the midst of human suffering.