I heard someone utter the words,
"Sober is just another word for thirsty."

And I did not believe her.

Until my throat started itching,
the moment I stopped the stitching
of molecules that altered me,
turned me around,
I had been treading backwards.
My body ached with vacancy,
my hands trembled with an appetite
that played the part of
of my hands on the wheel.

It is an agonizing contradiction,
to be weighed down by nothing,
every drop that plunged into my mouth,
every plume that escaped
the narrow path to my lungs
was a nail in my soles,
keeping me firm to the ground,
I became stagnant,
only dipping under the influence
to ask for what I thought
was needed assistance.

My temporarily
stainless bloodstream
bred venomous ideas
while the darkest parts of me quivered
with insatiable hunger,
and made a show of it
with my fluttering fingertips.

I had dreamt
on nearly every day of the week
with my eyes open,
of clawing my out of this
canyon of flesh
I had been trapped inside of,
the echoes of an empty heart
were enough
to keep me awake for days,
witnessing a continuum,
of sunset,
sunrise,
sunset,
sunrise,
yet the sky never brightened.

The darkness was addictive,
I became a ****** for the murky,
and I have been buried.

Underneath habits
that stifle me.

Smoke that leaves my lungs
no room
for new air.

There is an invisible layer
of soot
caked onto my skin
falling from my nights spent
drunk and unaware
of which direction
I was growing.

My odometer
slowly screams
for me to stop,
to reverse,
begin again.

My shower head works hard.
It tries to bathe me in rebirth.
The shampoo bottle whispers
with its shape,
asks me to sing again.
Why did I stop singing?

Because I no longer enjoyed the sound of my voice.
I stopped believing in it.
Drenched in half truths
and uncut delusions,
my tongue was poison.

I had denied the beautiful methods
of me.
And employed the ugly.
I gave a managerial promotions
to the mean
the spitting mad
and the angry
slices of my heart.

But I will dig through
these concrete slabs
of toxic routines.

And I will take back my beauty
and revive my love.
And become who I am,
climbing out of who I have been.