Poisoned Blood

You say you’re fine,

but your voice shakes like the truth you never speak.

You move like someone carrying a storm

they don’t believe is growing underneath.

And I can see it in your eyes —

the tired kind that don’t know why they’re tired,

the kind that’s holding something quiet

that your heart can’t name.

There’s a story in your bloodstream

you keep pretending isn’t there,

a whisper in your vessels

that you drown out with the air.

But the river in your blood runs slower now,

and you don’t feel the weight it carries through.

Your platelets tremble like they’ve seen a ghost —

and baby, they have…

it’s living in you.

You think you dodged the bullet clean,

but there are shadows dancing in your veins.

You don’t know your blood is aching too —

’cause no one taught you how to look for pain

that doesn’t bruise.

You joke about the coughs,

about “just another cold,”

but I hear the quiet panic in the pauses,

the fear you’ll never tell a soul.

Your life keeps moving forward

but your body’s stuck in back rooms

fighting battles you don’t recognize

’cause nobody ever warned you

that viruses don’t leave politely.

They linger in the corners,

rewrite the maps inside you

long before you ever notice

what they stole.

And I’m not saying this to scare you —

I’m saying it ’cause I care for you.

I don’t know you,

but I know the truth

of people torn in two

by what they never saw.

By what they breathed in

when they trusted the wrong things.

The river in your blood runs slower now,

but you keep dancing like you’re bulletproof.

I wish you’d see what your body feels —

the quiet fights it’s losing too.

You don’t know your blood is calling out,

trying to warn you in its trembling way.

You don’t realize your heart is whispering,

“It’s not too late.

Please don’t wait

to care for me today.”