The Empath and The Worm
Read more poetry by Britt Wolfe
The empath is not born soft.
That is the first misconception.
Sensitivity is not fragility—
it is acuity.
A nervous system calibrated
to detect shifts in tone,
microfractures in meaning,
the quiet tremor beneath words
that say one thing
and intend another.
This is why the worm finds them.
The worm does not seek strength—
it seeks permeability.
A host capable of carrying
what it cannot metabolize itself.
In narcissistic pathology,
empathy is not recognized
as a shared human capacity.
It is experienced as threat
and resource simultaneously.
The empath sees.
The worm cannot tolerate being seen.
So it attacks.
Not overtly at first.
That would risk exposure.
The attack begins as fascination—
mirroring, idealization,
a counterfeit resonance
that feels like recognition
but is actually reconnaissance.
The worm studies the empath
the way parasites study hosts:
where they soften,
where they yield,
where responsibility lives.
Then the inversion begins.
Boundaries are reframed as cruelty.
Truth is recoded as aggression.
Care is exploited,
looped back as obligation.
This is not conflict.
It is psychic predation.
The empath absorbs
what the worm ejects—
shame,
rage,
envy—
mistaking it for shared pain,
for mutual struggle,
for something that can be healed
through understanding.
But the worm does not want healing.
Healing would require integration.
Integration would require accountability.
So the attacks escalate.
Gaslighting destabilizes perception.
Projection assigns guilt.
Intermittent reinforcement
keeps the empath searching
for the version of connection
that never actually existed.
The goal is not dominance.
It is consumption.
The worm feeds on attention,
on emotional labour,
on the empath’s reflexive tendency
to repair what is breaking—
even when what is breaking
is the one doing the harm.
Eventually, the empath collapses inward,
confused, depleted,
carrying a weight
that was never theirs to hold.
This is the moment
the worm believes it has won.
But it misunderstands the organism.
Empathy is not infinite surrender.
It is perception paired with choice.
And when the empath finally recognizes
the pattern—
names it,
maps it,
withdraws—
the worm is exposed
to the condition it fears most:
absence.
Without a host,
it cannot perform coherence.
Without extraction,
it cannot simulate substance.
The empath does not destroy the worm.
That would require proximity.
They do something far more devastating.
They disengage.
And in the silence that follows,
the worm is left
with itself—
a closed loop of hunger
with nothing left to feed on.
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Poetry Anthologies by Britt Wolfe:
