Every Jagged Sip

The bottle cracked us both wide open,  

seven years of streets etched into skin.  

She curled beside me in the dark,  

a quiet hum, a hollowed-out hymn.  

Her breath a ghost I didn’t know  

was fading until it was gone.  

Vodka soaked through the cracks,  

liver groaning beneath her ribbed cage.  

She never wanted the weight to lift,  

said the burn was worth the fall.  

I watched her stumble, clung beside her,  

a mirror in every jagged sip.  

Her family pleaded like wind on stone,  

commitments, treatments, words—none stuck.  

She fought them off and fought herself  

until there was nothing left to lose.  

Our bed became the final exit

I woke to find a silence deeper,  

a silence that echoed my own thirst,  

a silence that sobered me into grief.  

She didn’t want sobriety, or light,  

and I can still taste her choice.