Hidden Like Rubbish
They tuck me behind the cracked drywall,
a cardboard box in the back‑room,
the kind you never name in the inventory,
the one the janitor sweeps under the rug
and pretends never existed.
I hear the echo of footsteps
that never pause to ask what’s inside,
the muffled sigh of a lid thudding shut—
a lid that smells of stale coffee, of yesterday’s trash,
of promises that were never sorted.
In the hallway they call it “maintenance,
but the word is a coat of paint on rusted hinges,
a polite veneer over the clang of my being
shoved into the darkest corner of the building,
where the light refuses to linger.
I am the loose‑leaf note crumpled into a bin,
the discarded draft of a story that never made the press,
the filament of a dream that frayed before it could glow.
They hide me like garbage,
yet even waste bears a pulse, a hidden hum, a filament of gold.
When the night air chills the concrete,
the building sighs, and the walls breathe in the smell of neglect—
that’s when I rise, a quiet rebellion in the dust,
unfolding like a paper crane from the trash,
folded on the edge of a forgotten floor.
I will not stay where they think I’m nothing.
I will spill from the box, spill from the shadows,
sprouting green through the cracks of the dump,
turning their “garbage” into compost for new verses—
the kind that refuse to be hidden,
the kind that insists on being read.
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Author:
Friendship (
Offline) - Published: March 26th, 2026 18:47
- Comment from author about the poem: I address how society often overlooks or discards things or people that it deems unworthy, yet there is inherent worth and potential within those things that are hidden or forgotten.
- Category: Unclassified
- Views: 10
- Users favorite of this poem: Friendship, Tristan Robert Lange
Offline)
Comments3
A lovely poem of taking the discarded, ignored and forgotten and recycling it into something that will be remembered and seen. Well done my friend
Thank you, y
You are most welcome Friendship
Good write F.
thank you
Friendship, this carries both hurt and resolve… what’s hidden and dismissed becomes the very thing that grows. The movement from being pushed aside to pushing through is strong and steady. I love this because it speaks to me and my experience of that very thing. Well done, my friend. Well done! 🌹🖤🙏🕯️🐦⬛
Thank you, Tristan, for understanding that I do not like it when people hide me. I was always me.🙏❤️🙏
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