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.”

Haunting neo-soul ballad with soft acoustic R&B, tender vocals, and intimate Lauryn-Hill-inspired emotion.