Dog at the Gate

Verse 1

I don't sleep with both eyes shut in a house with no lock

Every shadow got a voice and they all wanna talk

Every floorboard would creak with a warning at three

Every morning I'd wake and the warning was me

I was raised where the angels don't fly, they fall

Where the names of the dead get engraved on the wall

Mama cried through the night, I pretended I slept

While the sirens outside kept a rhythm with death

Fridge wouldn't hum. Heat got cut off. Sat in the dark.

Winter got loud and it spoke through the walls.

So I grew with the wolves, learned the language of teeth

Learned the weak get devoured when they beg for relief

Got a mark on my heart that still burns when it sparks

And the Dog comes alive when they cut off the lights

I ain't proud of the beast, but I know what it cost

Every step toward the throne was a step through the loss

No halo above me, just smoke in the air

And a voice in my head saying nobody cares

But I walk with the weight. I don't flinch. I don't cry.

A scar on my skin is a place I didn't die.

I still count them in silence. I still say them aloud.

The names of the nights I was too young to survive.

Verse 2

Every crack in the concrete had a code I could read

Every block had a price, every road had a toll

Prayed for a door, but the door never came

Prayed for somebody to pull us away from the flame

Nobody came, so I stopped waiting on grace

Put the weight on my back and the hate in its place

Now the street knows my footsteps before I arrive

And the dead know my name 'cause I carry 'em with me

But I still see the boy that I buried inside

When I look at the man that I built from the fight

Got brothers in pictures I can't bring back home

Got a number in my phone that I'll never call

Every feast got a famine behind it

Every crown got a body beneath it

Winters got longer. Hungers got louder.

Blessings I asked for came back as a shroud.

If the Dog is a monster, then look at the chain

This kind of hunger gets built in a room with no heat.

Verse 3

This for every night that I cried in the dark

For the names on the wall and the scars on my heart

For the brother I lost and the words left unsaid

For the last time I saw him, still stuck in my head

For every young soul that was raised on the same

Where survival gets praised and forgiveness gets blamed

Where a child learns a weapon before learning to heal

And mistakes get remembered long after they're real

I became what I hated, then hated the truth

That the Dog wasn't born — he was made in my youth

Hands that betrayed me put steel in my spine

Promises broke and left cracks in my mind

Now I stare at the mirror and recognize both

The boy who wanted love and the man that it broke

That's the war in my chest, that's the Dog that I feed

And the Devil can whisper, but he don't know my name

'Cause I raised every demon I carry through flame

So if you hear that growl when the whole city sleeps

That's the Dog at the gate with the wolves in the street

Not a king. Not a god. Not a savior. Not free.

Just a man and his shadow still fighting to breathe.