So I am a villain—is that what you wish to call me? 

If you want to bestow a title, I'll be your appointee

But really, ‘villain’ is so typical, so underwhelming, so lame

If I’m to have a title, I’ll have a different name

For, you see, I’ll infiltrate while you are vulnerable 

And though it is a lie, I’ll tell you I am merciful

I’ll wrap you around my finger and then and only then

Can the real games and the destruction begin

Not a villain: I am a sickness, creeping from within

I am bruise-purple blisters against ash-pale skin

I am fevered gasps choked from burning hot lips 

I am furiously gulped water in drowning desperate sips

I am red tears sliding down dank and ashen flesh

I am purple pustules bursting in a grotesque broken mesh

Of screaming fluid, poison corroding unexposed skin

I am the stomach acid consuming itself until your grasp on life is thin

I will enmesh you, sweet one, in ghostly tangling webs

Of suspicion and lies, I’ll drain faith till it ebbs

I will crumble your resolve, turn your mind to splintering shards

Until I am the only one for whom you drop your guard

Your thoughts will be thorn-filled thickets, raking red lines as you try

To release a howl, your struggles masked and cloaked from the sky

In your eyes shall be daggers, silver piercing scleras’ white

Each attempt to see bringing searing pain and plunging further into night

And in the end, your tortured mind will turn against itself, it will

Mistake flesh for infection, shower your veins with chemicals that kill

Until inflammation spreads and chokes your breath 

Your soul is on fire, as you creep toward death

You call me a villain, I propose that I’m not 

For isn’t sepsis the body’s natural reaction to rot?

Is it villainous truly, to be flicking a match

Toward a dry tinder forest and watching it catch?

For as embers explode as trees scream in dismay

I’ll be watching and grinning from far above the fray

Yes, I am a villain, and inwardly I embrace

What you scream at me in agony, what you spit upon my face

Insult me, and I shall raze you, in a single, crushing blow

And the best part? Only when the damage is irreparable shall you my actions know

In sepsis ascendo, per morte consumo tu 

In sepsis I rise, through death I devour you.