Your Poison

I raise my voice

And take it up

I raise my lips

Up to your cup

Filled with hemlock

I drink it up

Your poison

Just a palmful is enough

My ability is that I

Know how people are built

Inside their own heads

Fragile ecosystems

Thoughtful and sensitive

Full of the need to be

A feature not a bug

A feature not a bug

How many features did

I have to develop?

How many to stand here?

I constantly have had

To prove myself to myself

There is space for both

freedom and structure

In life we need both

Order in every chaos

Chaos in every order

This is the truth of the world

All things on a dialectical

Must float inside and

Outside of one another

We are our own antonyms

Because we live so strongly

In the hue of our own choosing

But what happens when

We stare at a picture too long?

Our eyes become tired

And we see a different and

Starkly opposite visage in our sight

Until such a time as we

Have rested and recovered

We see ourselves and are revulsed

By the constructs we see ourselves as

And what we expected ourselves to be

But often these constructed images are shadows

They see only the flaws and features

That we allow ourselves to see

They do not see the goodness

It is hard to acknowledge

The goodness of ourselves

When much of the time

What we are doing is in response

To the pain and trauma

We are trying to cause as

Little trauma as possible

and there are people out there

That are causing as

Much trauma as possible

As well

The point is to band together

To hold

To cast out those that will weaken

Our conviction to help and heal

But to lend them aid in

their times of need as well

Yet still they cast us down

And refuse to hold us up

We will cry but they will not let us

They will create a switch of the olive branch

Against those

That would speak ill of them or offer them impunity

I like cute waists and nice souls

And I confuse palmfuls of kindness

For poison

And I confuse palmfuls of hemlock

For love