Everyone Is Toxic
Read more poetry by Britt Wolfe
Everyone is toxic,
if you look closely enough.
Not in the villainous way—
not always loud or intentional—
but in the quiet seepage
of unexamined patterns,
coping mechanisms that outlived their usefulness,
wounds we learned to manage
before we learned to name.
We bruise each other
with our fears.
We contaminate rooms
with moods we haven’t metabolized.
We leak history
into moments that did not earn it.
Some of us weaponize silence.
Some of us overexplain.
Some love too tightly.
Some disappear.
None of this makes us evil.
It makes us human
in a world that did not pause
to teach us how to be gentle
with our damage.
We like our labels clean—
toxic / healthy
safe / unsafe
good people / bad ones—
as though complexity were a threat
instead of the only honest terrain.
But toxicity is not a verdict.
It is a signal.
A sign that something hurt
and learned to protect itself
without updating the strategy.
The danger is not
that we are all flawed.
The danger is pretending
we are not.
Accountability matters.
Repair matters.
Boundaries matter.
But so does the understanding
that no one arrives intact,
that everyone is carrying something sharp
they didn’t choose.
Acceptance does not mean tolerance of harm.
It means resisting the fantasy
that purity is possible.
It means choosing curiosity
over cancellation.
Discernment over exile.
Responsibility over shame.
Everyone is toxic.
And everyone is capable
of learning how not to be.
That is not naïveté.
That is faith
in the slow, difficult work
of being human together.
Not perfect.
Not harmless.
But honest enough
to try.
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Poetry Anthologies by Britt Wolfe:
