Toxic Waste

I want you to
stop telling me
your opinion
like it’s the
right answer.
Like you’re the only one
who knows anything.
It’s fucking annoying.
It’s fucking rude.
It’s a fucking product
of where you were raised.
A toxic place.

They complain that
you’re arrogant,
they don’t know
where it came from;
but they don’t look at
themselves in the mirror
when they say it,
the way they should.
They might recognize
something.
and maybe,
they know that.

At least I
have the arrogance
to look my arrogance
in the face and say
you do not control
me.
Not that I’m perfect,
not that I
haven’t had my moments.
I want that for you.
I want that for everyone
living in the toxic place,
so deep in it
they’re unsure that
they exist past the waste.
The ability to let
go of the anchor and
swim up for air.
To let yourself float
up, free from
expectation of perfection.

It’s so easy to
fall into
fire
thinking that
it’s comfort
because it’s warm
before it burns
you irreversibly; because it
smells lovely
before your skin
melts away.
Toxic waste, I imagine,
is similar. It is
at least similar
in people.
If you are blindfolded,
what is the difference
between burning
and melting
by the hand
that you love?

They are one
in the same;
An End.

I hope you rise
from the waste
and rinse it off.
I hope you
bandage
yourself up
and
say, “we’ve got
some healing to do.”
I wish I could do that
for you, but I cannot.
That is one thing you
learn outside of the waste–
that not everything is in
control. It never was.

You cannot remove
someone else’s waste
anymore than
you can forget your own.
You cannot control how long
the healing takes, you can only start.