Split Open

A poem about contradiction, morality, and the scream that refuses silence. It asks what it means to be good when bloom and ruin live in the same hands.

There are no fruits here,

no vegetables,

just this thought

scratching at the inside of my skull…

What makes a person good?

 

Because I don’t know,

and I don’t think anyone does.

Not really.

 

Science gives us rules.

If it has a seed,

it’s a fruit.

Clean. Final.

As if the world ever worked that way.

As if I ever did.

 

But people aren’t made of rules.

We're made of contradiction.

I have loved.

I have lied.

I have left people standing in their own storms

because I couldn’t carry their weight.

 

What does that make me?

 

I have no seed to show.

No sticker that says kindness included.

No rawness that proves

I’m safe.

 

I want to say

I’m a good person.

But that depends

on the version of me

you met.

 

Some days I bloom.

Some days I ruin things with my own hands

and pretend it’s growth.

There is tear on some of my better moments.

There is light in some of my darkest ones.

 

And still…

The world keeps asking me

to decide.

Fruit or vegetable.

Good or bad.

As if being human

was ever that simple.

 

So here I am…

no answers,  

just a question

that won’t stop:

 

Who are you  

when no one is naming you?

Who are you

when the only evidence

is the way you made someone feel

after they left the room?

 

If there’s a seed in that,

then maybe

I’m still worth growing.

 

but if this is the end...

 

Then let it close not with silence

but with a scream that knew its name.

Because I want to remember

that I was here,

asking the kind of question

most people are too afraid

to even hold.

 

I was not soft.

not easy.

not fruit.

 

I was something else.

wild, sharp,

in-between.

 

I didn’t always know what I was growing,

but I put it in the ground anyway.

And that matters.

Even if nothing bloomed.

Even if the soil spit it out.

Even if the only thing that grew

was me

trying to figure out

what it meant to be good

with hands that had already sinned.

 

So, if this is the end,  

know this:

 

I was split open,

but I wasn’t empty.

 

and I never stopped

asking why.

Author's Note

What do you think of the thought?