Will the anger ever truly go away?
Or will it always wait in my darkest corners
like a venomous spider ready to strike
in the moments I don’t recognize it’s there?

Today there was a box caught on the ramp and I asked
my coworker if he could do me a solid–just a little nudge–
and he said no I cannot! without so much as looking up.
I wanted to fill his veins with poison.

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the Brazilian wandering spider
and it’s all-fight-no-flight aggression.
Fuck your crushing foot, fuck your sweeping broom,
it will find a way to sink it’s fangs in you.

You know you’re in danger when it raises it’s body erect,
front legs reaching to the sky,
back legs cocked, ready to spring forward,
and maybe that’s closer to how I need to be.

Most of my enemies have shared one thing in common:
my empathy to use, misuse, and manipulate
so who is the real villain of my story?
I don’t really want to be kind anymore

or rather, I don’t want to run from battles
that need to be fought for the sake of my soul.
The wandering spider is such a small fraction of our size
yet it is feared. Respected.

What if I was just as assertive? Confident?
Nobody would be able to take away from my spiritual stores
but that requires a step away from myself
choosing suspicion of evil over forgiveness.

Will it work for everyone?
That one coworker seems more practiced at wandering spider than I am
so he’ll be hard to beat.
Nevertheless, my hands are raised, ready for a war.

I can’t change a world that I’m barely surviving in
and I can’t start turning things around while I’m still rolling over.
There, somehow, I’m finding a way to build a better me from the anger,
as long as I can also keep the venom out.

Or maybe I’ll leave it in…