Let The Good In
Read more poetry by Britt Wolfe
I have always been generous
with the terrible.
Every sharp word,
every careless dismissal,
every glance that lingered
just long enough
to imply deficiency—
I welcomed them like experts.
Come in, I said.
Sit anywhere.
Make yourselves comfortable.
And they did.
They nested.
They took up residence
in my ribs,
in the softest parts of my thinking.
They bloomed extravagantly,
fed by repetition,
by familiarity,
by the old superstition
that pain is more honest
than praise.
But the good—
the good I treated like propaganda.
I questioned its credentials.
Checked it for motive.
Deflected it with humour.
Minimized it with logic so tight
it strangled the gift mid-sentence.
You’re just being kind.
You don’t really mean that.
You haven’t seen the whole picture.
As if cruelty
never exaggerated.
As if harm
ever waited for full context.
This imbalance was not accidental.
Negativity arrives loudly,
insistent on entry.
It demands belief.
Positivity waits.
It knocks once,
softly,
and leaves if unanswered—
as though it understands boundaries
I never taught myself to keep.
So I am relearning arithmetic.
Not optimism—
evidence.
I am counting the voices
that gather instead of scatter.
The readers who stay.
The words that land
and echo back warm.
I am counting my fire-haired sister
whose love does not flicker,
my husband whose presence
turns silence into shelter,
the friends and chosen family
who show up without needing
to be convinced.
The numbers are not subtle.
For every insult,
there are dozens of hands extended.
For every doubt,
a community built
out of recognition.
The math is decisive.
So this is not blind faith.
This is reasonable acceptance.
I am no longer letting the demons
rent space rent-free
simply because they shout.
I am evicting them
with paperwork.
Here are the facts:
I am loved.
I am witnessed.
I am valued
in ways that repeat themselves
consistently,
reliably,
without cruelty.
The good is not fragile.
It does not need defending.
It only needs entry.
So I am opening the door
and stepping back.
Let it in, I tell myself.
At least as much
as you let the rest in.
And maybe—
eventually—
more.
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