I’ve understood for a long time now that we’ve all been poisoned

We’ve been poisoned and manipulated and misled.

We have drunk the poison willingly, sometimes, or “willingly”;

We have been coerced into swallowing things that harm us;

By threat of violence, or threat of social ostracism, or ostracism enacted as violence;

Sometimes we believe them a lot - and sometimes just a little.

And if you ask me why I speak sometimes with people who do not understand the same things I do - that is what I will tell you.

We have all been poisoned.

And some of us sweat and fight to purge it, and some of us become poison to survive;

and I count myself among those fighting and sweating, so I will tell you now,

none of us are wholly free of it.

So when you ask me - “why do you speak to that soul who smells of poison -”,

These words are spoken between people also bearing poison.

It takes time and wisdom to know poison from nourishment and medicine.

To unbecome poison, too, one must learn another way to survive -

So someone must share those ways with people who are brimming with poison, who drank it to protect themselves,

And it doesn’t have to be you, but as long as I can, when I can,

it might as well be me.

Do I fear that others will taint me with their poison?

Sometimes - and I shield myself from the malicious;

but this whole place smells of death, and my weapons will not fight the air.

Sometimes nourishment comes with just a small taint - and if we refuse all nourishment, we will die faster.

So I choose my battles.

Sometimes I turn away.

Sometimes I drink it down.

I wake up sick with it some days - and forgive the ones who sickened me, and hope they heal.

For if they cannot heal from it, how will I?

💚