Christopher Reilley Poems

Addiction AI image by Bytesized Studios ADDICTION Addiction arrives quietly, a hand resting on the shoulder— gentle at first, almost companionable, as if it merely wants to keep you company. It whispers in a voice shaped like your own, promising warmth, escape, a blurring of the world’s sharp edges. Drink moves through the body like a tide, slow and insistent, eroding the shoreline of intention. What begins as a spark in the throat becomes a fire in the mind, and even the strongest learn that the ocean always wins against the rock, given enough nights. Gambling hums in the blood, a bright, electric hunger. Every card turned, every wheel spun is a door that might open into fortune or ruin—and the not knowing is the hook. It coils around the will until the will forgets it ever had a spine. Sex arrives like a storm—heat, pulse, urgency— but this storm will not pass. It lingers in the bones, a craving that mistakes flesh for salvation. It rewrites the map of desire so thoroughly that even ...