Addiction, by Lori Khadse
My eyes, tired, rusting grey eyes.
Behind them, a flicker of temptation, frustration,
A dark, unsettling guilt, wilted,
And taunting memories
Of the numbing sensation.
Addiction doesn’t discriminate.
It dictates, determines every step I take.
It flooded my senses, drove me senseless.
It plays with my hate, it cages, it rages.
It’s a series of pills, a series of tests.
It makes me pathetic, stressed, a mess, distressed.
Reckless regret and no way to dismiss it.
An ocean of pain and no way to express it.
A poet.
But one word cannot define me.
An addict.
Too addicted to quit,
To admit it to himself he’s lost to the addiction, the temptation,
Thrown aside without a single thought of motivation.
The medication conquered, controlled, coaxed.
To take a pill?
Daring and unafraid?
It’s a mistake I wish I hadn’t made.
This is what addiction has done with my life.
Heed my advice;
Be smart about medicine.
There was a time
Before the darkness.
Before the pills.
I’d let my emotion spill in the poems.
Back when life was just a child’s rhyme,
when I’d had all the time in the world,
I’d thrive on the words, alive and strife free.
How do I decide if I need this to survive?
If I need these consistent pills to stay alive?
To keep from these thriving thoughts of suicide?
If I hadn’t relied on the medicine,
Sided my pride with addiction, would I still be able to fight?