How to breathe by CS

 addiction is a craving for unmet needs

we’re too ashamed to name.

addiction is what happens

when your inner child screams

and no one notices.

addiction is a prayer

in a language

your parents never learned

because their parents never listened.

addiction taught me loyalty.

i just had it pointed the wrong way.

if you strip shame

from the word addict

you’ll find

a 6-year-old

afraid of the dark

offering you a crayon

and a half-written poem

called “please stay.”

when you call your addiction evil,

you exile the only thing

that ever tried to keep you alive

while the world watched you bleed

and asked you to smile.

if you’ve never used

a steering wheel as a pillow

while praying not to relapse,

you don’t get to preach

sobriety.

don’t tell me about heaven

until you’ve sat

with a man who used hell

to make it through monday.

they said “get clean.”

i said “define dirty.”

because i’ve never seen

a single soul who used

that didn’t have something

they were trying

desperately

to wash away.

my addiction wasn’t the problem.

it was the solution to a problem

nobody else could solve.

you can’t punish the fire for doing

what the frostbite made necessary.

you can’t arrest the symptom

and ignore the cause.

you can’t cure the pain

by calling it criminal.

i still want the high.

i just finally realized

i am the fucking drug.

and let me tell you now:

cocaine will never be as pure

as catharsis.

every time i look in the mirror

i see every relapse as a rough draft

for the poem that finally learned

how to breathe.