They Say
They say humans aren’t born bad.
like that should comfort me.
like it means something
when I walk through a world
stitched together
by things we chose anyway.
They say we aren’t born good either
and that feels closer to the truth.
blank hands,
empty as open doors,
waiting to be filled
with whatever we’re handed
or whatever we take.
And what we take
what we make
what we leave behind
it’s everywhere.
I see it in the quiet cruelty
people pretend not to notice,
in the systems built so carefully
they look like accidents,
in the way harm becomes routine,
like background noise
no one bothers to turn off.
I am surrounded by it.
not monsters, not shadows,
not something easy to name and fight
people.
people who wake up,
get dressed,
go to work,
and build small pieces of something broken
over and over again.
And maybe that’s what unsettles me most
evil doesn’t always roar.
sometimes it hums.
sometimes it smiles,
shakes your hand,
and calls itself normal.
They say we aren’t born bad.
but we learn quickly.
and we get very, very good at it.
