She found out on a Thursday,
And the last time I slipped the smoke
Down my throat was Wednesday,
So I guess you could say this is Day Three.
Is it recovery
If you don’t see yourself as an addict?
But I guess every addict says that, don’t they?
And so begins the blessed unrest.

Each word laced with resentment,
I wonder how we’ll make it through this,
And I’ve asked her not to twist the phone cord
in her hands and scream at me from across the
kitchen because three summers ago,
she did,
and I sank far deeper than this.

The anxiety didn’t hit me until last night.
It crept up my back, like it was climbing each ****
In my spine hour by hour, till it finally touched the
Spirals of my brain and said, hey, let’s
Shock
A girl into feeling some pain.

I curled up in my bed with comforters over my head
and my phone lit up with his name.
He had gotten a text, was concerned, I guess,
And he listened as I rambled my achy words,
My humbled breaths.
There is nothing to hold back anymore.
I can’t afford to resist the tide much longer.

But I found
That he could distract me from the pain,
Involve me in another game,
A political drama not on the silver screen, but quite
Worthy of being.
We played with a deck of cards, building a house, seeing
How far it could go before falling down.
And when he said he had to go, he was home,
I didn’t even notice the skipped heartbeats anymore.