Taste of Your Words

*read aloud as spoken word*

One taste of your words and I was hooked. They lingered, stuck between my teeth, my tongue tasting them long after you’d gone. They became my drug of choice, the high I never stopped chasing. I was an addict, you my supplier. Out of your mouth spilled silvery pools of heroin, cascading into my veins, flowing through my body, filling me, feeling everything and nothing, and never wanting to not feel that way again. Look what you did, leaving track marks across my mind. They were me and I was them. A poison I believed to be the antidote to a sickness called life. And I forgot a world without them. A world without you. What made me feel alive was slowly killing me, and when you left I wish it would have. Your words may have hurt me, but the pain of silence is unimaginable. My body rejected this state of withdrawal. Give him back it said. Give me one more hit just one more high. Punishing me as I lay shaking on the bathroom tile, salty tears dripping like acid down my face. Give him back. My skin was sweaty, but I was freezing, my clammy hands aching for yours. My chest was on fire, and my lungs were drowning. My brain was screaming Please end it. End it right now, I am begging you. I finally understood people who said there are worse things than death. When you left my system, I was clean and I was free, but I was alone. Being an addict almost killed me, but I found sobriety is not a life worth living if falling off the wagon means falling in love.