DETOX

 He was my routine—

the way morning knew my name.

My dopamine drip,

measured in good-morning texts

and midnight breaths.

He was my safe place,

though the floor sometimes shifted.

My mirror—

I saw myself alive in his wanting,

brighter in his hands.

Now the silence feels like suffocation,

like lungs learning grief.

Oxytocin still lingers in the blood,

whispering return,

even when the mind knows better.

This is not love dying—

this is chemistry unlearning a home.

A body asking for a ghost

that once felt like oxygen.

I am detoxing from a powerful bond,

from touch remembered too well,

from pleasure that taught my nerves

to call him refuge.

Some days I breathe shallow.

Some mornings I ache without reason.

But breath is returning—

slow, unfamiliar, mine.

I am not broken.

I am withdrawing.

And withdrawal is proof

that something real once passed through me—

not that it must stay.