Cold turkey
I quit you like a bad habit
cold turkey, hands shaking,
pretending I was stronger than the craving
of your name on my tongue.
There was no easing out of it,
no gentle tapering of touch—
just the sudden absence
of your skin beneath my fingertips,
like waking up without a pulse
and calling it survival.
I have to stop touching you.
That’s the rule I repeat
like a prayer I don’t believe in.
Because even the ghost of your hand
against my shoulder
is enough to undo me.
And your eyes—
God, your eyes—
I can’t look into them anymore.
Not when mine still burn
with everything I’m trying to bury.
There’s a fire behind them, behind mine,
and if they meet,
we both know it won’t go out.
We were all hope and hunger,
all almost and not yet—
a future that felt so close
I could taste it in your breath.
Desire wrapped in possibility,
the kind that makes you believe
in things that never get to exist.
So I turned away.
Not because the fire died—
but because it didn’t.
And now I sit with the ache of it,
this quiet withdrawal,
this empty-handed grief
of wanting something
I chose to lose.
My body doesn’t know how to quit you.
My heart never will.
