Slowly the poison the whole blood stream fills. It is not the

Host: The evening was thick with rain and the city pulsed under a curtain of wet neon. Down an old alley, where steam hissed from metal grates and puddles caught trembling reflections of light, a single bar flickered with life. Inside, the air was dense — a blend of old whiskey, cigarette smoke, and the dull ache of forgotten dreams.

In a corner booth, Jack sat hunched over a glass, the amber liquid half gone. His grey eyes were tired, not from work but from years of holding too much silence. Across from him, Jeeny sat quietly, her hands wrapped around a chipped cup of tea, her brown eyes calm but deep with worry.

The rain outside became a steady drum, beating time to the weight of their unspoken thoughts.

Jeeny: “William Empson wrote, ‘Slowly the poison the whole blood stream fills. It is not the effort nor the failure tires. The waste remains, the waste remains and kills.’”

(she looked at him, voice low) “I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately.”

Jack: (without lifting his eyes) “Yeah? Sounds like something written by a man who’d seen too much of the inside of himself.”

Host: The light from the flickering lamp above them painted long, uneven shadows across the table. Jack’s fingers tapped against the glass, rhythmic, restless.

Jeeny: “It’s not just about sorrow. It’s about what we keep — the waste, the regret, the resentment. It poisons us, slowly. You can work, you can try, you can even fail nobly… but it’s the things we don’t release that kill us.”

Jack: (snorts softly) “You sound like my therapist — if I had one. But tell me, Jeeny, what do you think we’re supposed to do with the waste? Bury it? Burn it? It never really goes away. You can forgive the world all you want — it doesn’t forget.”

Jeeny: “Maybe forgetting isn’t the goal. Maybe it’s learning to live with the scars without letting them rot.”

Host: Her voice trembled slightly — not from fear, but from the weight of the truth she was carrying. Jack looked up at her then, his eyes sharp but fragile, as if staring into something both comforting and unbearable.

Jack: “You talk about it like it’s a choice. Like pain is a faucet you can turn off. You think Empson had a choice? He saw the waste — in society, in people, in himself. That’s the price of consciousness. Once you see how things decay, you can’t unsee it.”

Jeeny: “That’s true. But awareness isn’t the poison, Jack. It’s what we do with it that matters.”

Host: The bartender wiped a glass in silence, pretending not to listen. The low hum of a jazz record filled the air, the saxophone bleeding slow and raw through the dim room.

Jeeny: “You ever notice how people don’t die from work or failure — they die from bitterness? They keep going through the motions, but the soul’s already gone. That’s what Empson meant, I think — it’s not the fall that kills you. It’s the rot that comes after.”

Jack: “So you think the answer is to stay pure? Keep the blood clean?”

Jeeny: “No. To keep it moving. Flowing. Even poison stagnates before it kills.”

Host: Jack leaned back, letting her words settle. His jaw flexed, a faint smirk curling at the edge of his mouth, but his eyes betrayed something else — a flicker of old pain, an unburied memory.

Jack: “When my brother died, people kept saying time would heal it. But time didn’t heal anything. It just layered over it — like wallpaper on a cracked wall. The waste didn’t fade. It just learned how to smile.”

Jeeny: (quietly) “And you never forgave yourself, did you?”

Jack: (a sharp breath) “For what?”

Jeeny: “For surviving.”

Host: A long pause filled the bar, thicker than the smoke. Jack looked away, his reflection trembling in the whiskey glass, as if the man inside it were asking him the same question.

Jack: “You know what the real poison is, Jeeny? Not regret. Not grief. It’s routine. It’s the way you wake up one day and realize every choice you didn’t make is still there — waiting. You start thinking it’s too late to change, and that thought… it starts to eat you alive.”

Jeeny: “That’s not poison, Jack. That’s fear disguised as acceptance.”

Host: The rain outside intensified, cascading down the window like a thousand unspoken confessions. Jeeny reached for her cup, her fingers trembling slightly, but her eyes were steady.

Jeeny: “You’ve been carrying waste for years. The failures you never owned, the apologies you never said. It’s not too late to release them.”

Jack: (dry laugh) “Release them where? Into the rain?”

Jeeny: “Maybe that’s exactly where they belong.”

Host: The light flickered once more. A single drop of rain slipped through the cracked window and fell onto the table, darkening the wood. Jeeny watched it absorb, then fade.

Jeeny: “You see that? Even waste dissolves when you stop holding onto it.”

Jack: “You make it sound easy.”

Jeeny: “It’s not easy. It’s necessary.”

Host: The music changed — slower now, heavier — a single trumpet stretching its sorrow into the room. Jack looked around as if seeing the bar for the first time — the peeling paint, the tired bartender, the worn faces of strangers who’d each built their own small prisons.

Jack: “You think all this — all of us — are just carrying waste?”

Jeeny: “Yes. Some carry loss, some carry guilt, some carry the weight of not becoming who they could’ve been. We all poison ourselves differently.”

Jack: “And what do you carry?”

Host: The question landed softly but deep. Jeeny looked down, then up again, her eyes glistening like wet glass.

Jeeny: “Hope. Though some days, it feels like it’s rotting too.”

Jack: (after a pause) “At least hope’s a better poison than despair.”

Host: They both laughed — quietly, bitterly, but there was warmth in it too, like a dying ember still giving light. The rain outside began to slow, its rhythm easing, like a heartbeat finding rest.

Jeeny: “Maybe that’s what Empson meant to warn us about — not to stop working or living, but to stop letting the waste define us. We can’t stop the poison from entering, but we can stop feeding it.”

Jack: “You think redemption’s possible for everyone?”

Jeeny: “No. But renewal is.”

Host: Jack finished his drink and set the glass down gently. The bar light caught the edge of his face, revealing lines of both fatigue and release. He looked at Jeeny, the cynic stripped from his voice now.

Jack: “Then maybe it’s time I flushed the system.”

Jeeny: “Start with forgiveness. It’s the strongest antidote I know.”

Host: Outside, the rain finally stopped. The city lights shimmered across the soaked streets, every puddle catching its own small universe of color. The air smelled cleaner, lighter — as if something dark had just exhaled.

Jack stood, pulling on his coat, his movements slow but deliberate. Jeeny followed, her eyes soft, her expression full of something unspoken but infinite.

Jack: “You’re right, Jeeny. The waste remains — but maybe it doesn’t have to kill.”

Jeeny: “Not if you turn it into fuel.”

Host: They stepped out into the cooling night, their reflections melting into the wet pavement. The city hummed around them, alive again, washed of its noise and sorrow.

And as they walked under the faint glow of streetlights, the truth hung between them — fragile, necessary, and painfully human:

That the poison of life is not in the failures we endure, but in the bitterness we refuse to release.
That every drop of waste — grief, regret, exhaustion — can destroy, or cleanse.
And that sometimes, survival isn’t about resisting the poison…

…it’s about learning to let it flow.