Reflecting on the days clouded with addiction, a far away past that still slips in with the blunt smoke and fresh wounds. And some wounds don’t bleed, they echo. Reentry Wounds isn’t about healing. It’s about the moments before that, when the dust hasn’t settled and your hands still shake from the fall. It’s for the ones who don’t romanticize rock bottom but know its shape by feel. This isn’t pretty. It isn’t polished. But it’s true. And sometimes that’s all we’ve got.
They told me madness was a sickness,
a crack in the glass,
but they forgot glass cuts both ways.
I drank god from motel sinks,
woke up in cities I couldn’t pronounce
with names I didn’t remember tattooed across my tongue.
There’s a poetry to collapse.
The way a man learns the syllables of pain
through fire escapes and restraining orders,
through bar tabs and funeral playlists.
Freedom’s not a flag,
it’s a dive bar jukebox
playing “Gimme Shelter” on repeat
while your last dollar turns to smoke
in the hands of someone holier than you.
I didn’t escape
I evaporated.
Slipped between cracks in time
where sunlight forgets your name
and the only mirror that doesn’t lie
is the rearview one.
I’m not here for redemption.
I’m here to remind you
that falling is just another way to fly
and hitting the ground
is only the beginning.
Read this on Substack where it first appeared — if you’re into that sort of thing.
