Dirty fangs

They said,
“Let someone else soothe the sting.”
So I did.
Offered up the wound like worship,
let hands trace pain like cartography
mapping me by the places that still flinched.

They called it healing.
I called it
distraction dressed as devotion.

They sucked the poison out
but their fangs
sank deeper.
Traded one ache for another,
a softer venom
that didn’t sting
until it settled in my bones.

And I let them.
Let them whisper comfort
until it sounded like scripture.
Let them kiss me like redemption
while digging graves in my softness.

Sometimes, the cure wears the same face
as the sickness.
Sometimes, the antidote
is just a prettier kind of poison.

I wasn’t looking for love
just a quiet place to bleed.
But even silence has teeth,
and I’ve learned
not every mouth that says “stay”
knows how.

Now I carry phantoms 
who never meant to haunt me.
And names I never speak
still echo within my chest
when I try to call myself whole.

Spoken, poetic, rap, emo rap