What We Call the Problem
Poetry & Prose by Britt Wolfe
We step over them.
Their bodies,
their belongings,
their humanity
compressed into a shape
that fits between our footsteps.
We call it the opioid crisis.
We call it addiction.
We call it a tragedy.
Anything but what it really is:
a failure of mercy
so vast it has become invisible.
We built a society full of holes
and then blamed the ones
who fell through them.
We tut and shake our heads
at the alleyways and tents,
at the bent backs and trembling hands,
pretending not to see
that this is what happens
when compassion is defunded.
They were not born beneath bridges.
They were not raised by needles.
Once, they were children—
bright, soft, hopeful.
But hope is expensive,
and childhood is a luxury
only some can afford.
We let poverty parent them.
We let trauma teach them.
We let a system designed for profit
prescribe them their destruction.
And when they broke in predictable ways,
we looked away,
called it choice,
called it consequence,
called it anything
but what it was—
neglect wearing a suit and tie.
We criminalized the symptom
and worshipped the cause.
We let greed masquerade as medicine
and capitalism call itself God.
We let companies bottle pain
and sell it as relief,
and when the body couldn’t tell
where comfort ended and craving began,
we called the body weak.
Now, they lie in our streets,
half alive, half erased,
their survival a kind of protest.
And we still ask, why don’t they stop?
As if they haven’t been stopped
their entire lives.
We made a world
where people have to earn their right to exist,
and then wonder
why so many give up trying.
We keep our distance—
from the alleys,
from the truth—
because proximity breeds responsibility,
and we’ve decided
compassion is bad for business.
But when I see them—
the shivering, the forgotten, the still—
I think:
they are not the problem.
They are the proof.
The mirror.
The consequence.
The cost of a world
that mistakes punishment for order,
profit for purpose,
and survival for sin.
KEEP MY WORDS ALIVE
If this poem has stayed with you, you can help keep my words alive or explore more of my work. Every bit of support helps carry the stories forward.
Poetry and Prose by Britt Wolfe
