Poem: What Trauma Does Your Addition Hold?

What trauma does your addition hold,
Behind the hunger, fierce and bold?
What ghosts have gathered at your door,
To whisper just a little more?

A pill, a bottle, smoke or flame—
Each one a mask, but none a name.
They hush the cries you cannot share,
Then leave you gasping, raw, and bare.

Perhaps a silence left too long,
A place where something should belong.
A touch that hurt, a word unmet,
A loss your heart can’t quite forget.

The high, the rush—it feels like flight,
But lands you deeper in the night.
Each hit a stitch across the seams
Of shredded hopes and haunted dreams.

You bargain with the pain you feel,
Convince yourself that this will heal.
But trauma isn’t soothed by lies—
It waits behind your reddened eyes.

So ask, not just why do I use?
But what inside was born to lose?
And in that space, so dark, so wide,
You’ll find the child you still must guide.

Speak soft to them. Don’t turn away.
They’ve waited through your longest day.
And healing comes, though slow and cold,
When you ask:
What trauma does your addition hold?