What does empathy occlude? When might it efface difference by reducing difference to feeling? What are the limits of thinking of care as empathy? In this trio-logue, we interrogate the pervasive notion of empathy—often cast as the prerequisite or synonym for care. Insofar as the positive valuation of empathy is taken for granted across many discourses, this collective trio-logue will take a transdisciplinary approach to a critique of empathy and an exploration of its limits for professional care, political action, and literary experience. It begins with a fable about the boy who stuck his finger in the dike, then weaves through the construction of the empathizable political subject and its limits as a driver of political action, Daoist conceptions of the cosmos, close readings of contemporary poetry, the philosophy of Walter Benjamin, and accounts of empathy burnout in lived experience—to explore care otherwise than as empathy. The collective ends by expanding its discourse into the room, inviting audience members' thoughts into the trio-logue.